The Druid's Daughter
by Verity Brown
Summary: AU, based only on The Sword of Shannara. If you loved the original book, have a look.
1. Chapter 1

**Obligatory Disclaimer:** The Shannara universe belongs to Terry Brooks. This story is not for profit and is not intended to infringe on copyright. It is being posted here purely for the sake of sharing ideas.

**A/N:** In 1979, I read _The Sword of Shannara_ and fell immediately in love with its universe. This was back at a time when I had never even heard of the concept of fan-fiction, although I had been making up fan-fiction in my head all my life for almost every story I really enjoyed: _Doctor Dolittle_, _The Six Million Dollar Man_, _Star Wars_, _Battlestar Galactica_, and even _Lord of the Rings_. But around the time I read _The Sword of Shannara_, I also met the person who would become my lifelong best friend, and _**she wrote stories**_. I had never thought of actually writing down my fan-fiction, but, under her influence, I began to do so.

Before _The Elfstones of Shannara_ had come out, I had greatly enlarged upon the world of Shannara. I had a map that showed far beyond the boundaries of the map in the book. And, more importantly, I had a story. And, when _Elfstones_ came out, I had a choice. My story was incompatible with the world we see in _Elfstones_ (the word today is "canon-shafted"). So I could either give up and try to do something more compatible with canon, or I could declare an Alternate Universe and keep plugging away. As you might guess, I chose the latter.

The story, as it now exists, is (I hope) a long way from the scribblings of a fourteen-year-old. I worked on it, in draft after draft, into my early thirties, until my own "original" writing took precedence. To a certain extent, though, the core is still there. There is, undoubtedly, something a bit Mary-Sue-ish about Andrea Shamrock. But if you loved the original book as much as I did, I hope you will forgive it of any failings and just enjoy it for what it has always been: a labor of love.

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**Prologue Part I**

**Errand**

Chestry paused before the cottage door. When his father had told him this morning that Allanon wanted to see him, the young man had not greeted the news with his usual enthusiasm. Not that he didn't wish to make a journey just now; though, upon reflection, the sweltering heat of high summer _would_ be oppressive outside his cool forest home. No, it was more an uncertainty about the Druid himself. The man had been almost fey lately, and no one about him had felt certain just what to expect.

The Elf sighed and raised his hand to the door, trying to gather scattered thoughts in his native tongue into the appropriate ones in the common speech. It was better to find out what was wanted as soon as possible; _go right away_, his father had said. The older Elf had, in his own younger days, gone on just such errands as Chestry now did; certainly he ought to know the way of things, and his advice was worthwhile to abide by.

All the same, the knock sounded a bit fainter, even to his own ears, than it might have; and at the muffled, "Come in," the Elf pressed the door open cautiously.

The high desk on the far right end of the little room was open, its pigeonholes darker blots in the dim light. The heavy curtains were still drawn across the windows, and the atmosphere inside seemed oppressive and overwarm on this bright, hot day. Chestry made it a point not to look around, keeping his head straight forward, but his quick eyes had taken in the scattered mess of papers, books and miscellenea, far worse than usual—or at least than he had ever seen it, the young man corrected himself; he had not actually come inside here that often. Now that he thought about it, most of his previous journeys had had his father's house as their beginning point. The sense of something gone amiss was darting around every corner of the room.

The dark head of the man seated at the desk turned then, and the dark eyes of the other seemed to reach intensely toward him. The Elf felt as if he were being drawn unexpectedly forward into an utterly private world, at the center of all the Druid's secrets, as if he one of those who... Chestry was halfway across the room, without realizing that his own feet had carried him there. Then, abruptly, the dark eyes were as veiled as ever. And Chestry knew without a doubt he was still outside the circle.

Chestry blinked rapidly, trying not to let any of what had experienced show on his face. Not everyone realized to what extent they were kept from Allanon's complete confidence--and very, very few were allowed into the group who had it. Devan Maleny was one of them, and his son knew better than most what it was like _not_ to be a part of that group. Yet there was a certain amount of relief afforded at not knowing everything that was going on behind that dark visage. There was something in those eyes that, if it had been anyone else, Chestry would have named despair; and seeing it in the Druid chilled the Elf to the bone.

Still, he was not an untried boy; he had been carrying messages, important ones, around the Westland and the Borderlands for the past six years--irregularly to be sure, since Allanon wasn't always in the village. It was frustrating that the Druid had apparently decided not admitted him into Devan's place in that trust after all. But seeming to react would only increase the perception of his unacceptability.

"My father said you wanted me." The statement came out sounding more like a question.

"Yes." The Druid looked back down at the disarray before him on the desk, then, pushing his chair away from it, turned to face the youth. "There's an errand I need to have done..." he slowed, and Chestry recognized a tension he had come to know; it meant that wherever Allanon was sending him, he would rather be going himself. The Druid went on, "It will take the better part of a month, or more, for you must be very careful not to arouse suspicion, and therefore must work slowly."

Chestry nodded at once in acknowledgment. Allanon's errands were generally always matters in which some degree of secrecy was required. And it was Chestry, with his ability to master his demeanor, and an innate sense of caution, upon whom the Druid could depend.

Then, without warning, Allanon looked sharply at the Elf, as if he were somehow uncertain of the man's fitness for the task, uncertain of _something_ at least. The young man was rocked by that look. Of course he could do the job! He'd never failed Allanon yet; nor had his father before him, until the accident that had left him too lame to walk from house to stable without a crutch.

Finally there was a blink, and Allanon continued, "First, you will take a letter to Arborlon, to King Illvard. I want it placed directly in his hand." He produced the letter from the disordered surface of the desk, and Chestry took it quietly, though excitement was growing in him. To go! Not only to the capitol and the court, where he had, of course, been before; though not often enough to find it truly commonplace; but to go in fact before the Elven King, instead of delivering the message to Prince Eventine as he was normally wont to do.

"When you have delivered the letter, remain in the city for a week: you are there to see the sights, all the grandeur that a young man from the deep West ought to be impressed with. But by the time the week is up, you will be offered a position as messenger, either to the King himself, or more likely, to Eventine. You will accept, and you will ask to be given an errand to the Southland."

"And I will be given one?" Chestry asked, slightly amazed at the idea that he would be giving his own orders, to the Crown Prince no less; but then of course, they weren't really _his_ orders. But if he was taking the letter, shouldn't there be instructions in it?

"You will--the King understands this. This matter is very important, and very secret--too secret to place more of it on paper than absolutely necessary. I must depend on your ability to be unobtrusive, on your caution," the Druid's voice was intense, and Chestry expected him to say more, but he did not speak again for a moment.

"And then?" asked the elf, his curiosity lending intensity to his words.

"Then," said Allanon at last. "On your way south to Talhan, you will travel through the Southland Hill Communities, and you will pass through one of the Vales, a village called Shady Vale. You will stay in an inn there.

"Not far from the inn there is a house: a fine old house. And you will find a girl child. About four years old. An orphan..."

He paused. The young Elf found that he was having some difficulty following the supposed purpose of this errand. It was almost as if the Druid were rambling to himself.

"Find out, without arousing any sort of suspicion," and now the Druid's voice rose, as if in warning; but Chestry heard his throat catch, as if he were choking on the words, "find out as much as you can: what happened to the girl's mother. Find out what they are doing with the child. If she is in any sort of danger bring her back to me, as immediately as possible. Otherwise you will leave her where she is and continue on the Prince's errand."

Chestry Maleny watched the unwonted play of emotions on the other man's face as he spoke, shifting like a weathervane before a storm. He dared not show it, but it frightened the Elf, on top of all that he'd heard these past few days; this was not the Allanon he had known all of his life. But then, Devan had known the Druid longer still; _I've lived long enough to know things about Allanon that you do not_, his father had warned him once, and Chestry wondered whether his father had ever seen the Druid like this before. The elder Melany had worn a strange, uneasy expression when he hobbled home last evening, and there had been quiet, terse words spoken between his parents in the dark of their room that night that Chestry hadn't heard.

"I'm not sure I understand everything.".

"What do you not understand?" Allanon sounded impatient. "You will carry out this commission, exactly as I have told you. When you have returned to the Westland, you will be given leave to return home for a time. You will tell me then what you have learned."

"About the girl, I meant," Chestry asked uncertainly. "What sort of danger do you mean? And should I bring her back straight across the mountains, or..." he trailed off. Allanon was staring at the desk, seemingly without seeing it, fingering his close, dark beard.

He turned back to face the other before answering. "Use your own judgment. It will be much clearer when you are there and have seen what there is to see. You have been very dependable in the past. I expect that you will continue to be so.

"It is not important, for now, that you know anything more. In fact," and at this point Allanon stood up, very tall in front of the slight form of the Elf; though to Chestry, watching him, the Druid seemed shrunken into himself almost, "the less you know about it at present, the better.

"Incidentally," Allanon added, "find a horse, if possible, not a unicorn. Not all of Arborlon needs to know where you've come from."

He looked down at the youth, and extended his hand, clasping the other's with a firmness that spoke something beyond his words. "I trust you in this with more than you imagine. Do not fail me."

Chestry suppressed a desire to swallow hard, surprise and determination welling up in him, yet oddly little pride. Somehow this errand troubled him, even scared him.

Allanon turned away then, apparently in dismissal. Chestry, discomfited at the abruptness which simply leaving now would entail, but uncertain what more to say, or if he should say anything, at last spoke, "I will not fail, sir. Ke tama 'n," he added the words of assurance of the ancient Elven speech, which he used daily at home, automatically in the depth of his conviction. It marked him as a deep Westlander. Chestry felt suddenly angry at his own desire to blush at that: this was his own village where people spoke the ancient tongue as a matter of course, and some never even bothered to learn the common language used in the capitol and in the rest of the Four Lands. Why should he feel ashamed of it? In Arborlon, maybe, but here?

"Thank you," he added, lamely, with a nod of his head, and stepped backward, turning to go. "I'll leave immediately." Which was, of course, what Allanon expected of him.

"As soon as it can be managed." But the voice was softer; and the Elf looked up again and caught the Druid's eye. They held there for a moment, and Chestry felt as if all the faith that has ever attended between the giver and the carrier of a message had fallen upon him. Then, in the same language as the youth had spoken in shame a moment ago, Allanon answered in the ancient injunction, "_Be true, Chestry Maleny, be true_."

With his heart in his throat, Chestry said, "I will, sir," and slipped quickly out the door.

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**A/N:** I love reviews. 


	2. Chapter 2

**Obligatory Disclaimer:** The Shannara Universe belongs to Terry Brooks. This story is not for profit and is not intended to infringe on copyright. It is being posted here purely for the sake of sharing ideas.

**A/N:** Thank you, Lady Whitehart, for reviewing! I more than half expected that no one would. But reviews are good. I like reviews.

I realized that there was a useful bit of information that I didn't give in the previous notes: the prologue takes place nine years before _The Sword of Shannara_. In case anyone was confused.

The second half of the prologue is a little different. Ordinarily, I don't write in first person. It's a difficult thing to do well. But when I went to write more about Chestry Maleny, he stepped up and demanded to tell his own story. So here it is.

**

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Prologue Part 2**

_Don't cry, little one.  
__Make a wish for each sad little tear.  
__Hold your head up when no one is near:  
__Someone's waiting for you.  
_from Disney's **_The Rescuers_**

**Orphan**

It took me the better part of three weeks to reach my destination, not counting the four days I spent in Arborlon getting the directives that I was supposed to be carrying out. My real purpose, I began to suspect after my audiences with the king and Prince Eventine, was in fact known only to myself and Allanon. I was grateful for that, since it left little room open for the more nasty sorts of accidents that can happen when too many people know things that should be none of their business. It bothered me a little all the same. It took me quite a while to figure out why. I didn't think that it was because there would be no one to bail me out if I got in trouble. For one thing, I didn't intend for there to be any trouble. I'm very good at avoiding it when I want to be, as the soldier who ended up taking every bit of the blame after he tried to start a tavern brawl with me could tell you, as soon as he got out of confinement.

I finally decided that what was troubling me was the fact that my sovereign _didn't_ know precisely what he was giving his approval to, and yet he still gave it--organizing things precisely as Allanon's letter had requested. I may know little about court intrigues, but I know enough about politics in general to understand how much influence the Druid had with Illvard II. The Elven Kings have always relied on the Druids for counsel and support in their causes; but it bothered me to think of Allanon giving unquestioned orders as easily to King Illvard as to me.

All the same, I carried those orders out to the letter. Traveling through Callahorn and the Southland presented a certain risk for me, as an Elf, of being distinctly noticed. Not that Elves never travel to the South--at my apparent destination in Talhan, Elven travelers are common enough not to be stared at in the streets; but most Westlanders go south by way of Valdera, through the Wildedge--dangerous as that cutthroat infested jungle is--though I expect a good many of those who regularly travel that way have their own connections, or at least understandings, with the outlaws there, and so are able to go with a certain degree of impunity. In my official capacity as a messenger of Prince Eventine, I would not have cared to go that way, even if my errand had not required that I travel through a certain village of the Hill Communities: east rather than west of the mountains.

And that was where, on a day in August when the breeze had finally decided to give the heat-weary inhabitants of this part of the Four Lands a rest at last, I rode into the village square, asked after an inn, and found myself riding up to the great log building with a certain amount of trepidation. I had covered my tracks well, I considered: asking the same casual questions at every inn along the road, that I intended to ask here. I had learned more than I enjoyed knowing about individual human miseries in the process; and I soon found myself wishing that I had some way of solving the problems I was listening to. I finally had to get a grip on myself, because it was destroying something in me, leaving me with a helpless feeling of inability to fix the least part of the world's unhappiness. I had to focus on what I had been sent to do.

Here, I told myself, here the answers really counted. What I learned here in the village of Shady Vale would determine my course of action after today; and if I was not careful enough in learning it... I did not want to consider the possibilities if I failed in my secrecy.

If the truth were told, though, I had a private notion that if there was trouble lurking in this tiny Southland hamlet, it was either incredibly well concealed or so blatantly in the open that no one here could recognize it for what it was. It did not take me long to decide that Shady Vale was exactly what it seemed--a frontier village whose inhabitants were just stubborn enough to try to make a living out here in these hills. All the same, there might be other travelers at the inn who would take an unwarranted interest if I let something slip that I shouldn't, or even Valemen who might repeat scraps of gossip later: I could not let down my guard.

I was surprised to find that the hamlet was not so very different from my own home. The surrounding forests, while not as great and deep as those in the Westland, and the tiny size of the place reminded me unaccountably of Glade. But the people here were of a different sort. The stubbornness of Glade's Elves is not so obvious, and it comes from a different source than that of these Men. The Valemen are stubborn within themselves, I think, and they bring that doggedness from a hundred other places; but in Glade our persistence seems to come out of the land itself, out of the fact that untold generations have lived and died there, that we are as rooted to the earth as the trees themselves.

The inn that I was to enter was fairly new, and like most of the buildings in the village, was constructed of stripped logs. Two wings spread back on either side of a central building fronted with double doors; it was through these that I stepped to face whatever fate had decreed as the ending of my errand.

Inside, a long bar stretched out along the right-hand wall, while a collection of tables clustered to the left, none of them nearer than necessary, at this season, to the great hearth on that side of the room, though there was nothing on the grate but old ashes. A few men--farmers, I guessed--were sitting at the bar, and a few at the tables. It was nearing lunchtime, and they seemed to be working their way up through a few beers to having something to eat. The idea had its merits; I hoped the food was good, since I would be staying for dinner and breakfast as well, unless something untoward happened. I had planned this out carefully in order to have as much time as possible to learn what I needed to know. And to deflect any suspicion as to why I would choose to stop here so early in the day--as the excuse of the heat did not oblige me--I contrived to have my horse throw a shoe just north of the village.

In accordance with this plan, I approached the bar, ordered a drink with a small degree of hesitation, and asked if there was a blacksmith in the town. Of course there was--I had seen the forge and livery just past the inn--but I wanted to make sure everyone at the bar heard me bemoan my misfortune. The youth behind the bar directed me, as I expected, to the aforementioned livery, both as the best way to get the shoe replaced and the best place to stable my horse if I elected to remain 'til the next day.

I grumbled that I supposed I might as well have lunch anyway, and went to arrange for the reshoeing of my mare: a grey-dappled fine-boned creature that I had brought all the way from Glade. There are few enough horses there, for the main business at home is the breeding of unicorns: so rare and difficult to manage that only a few are ever seen as far east as Arborlon. But my mare is bred out of a strain that is said to be born of a unicorn that lost her horn and foaled only bright-dappled, hornless colts ever afterward, and the horn never appeared in that line again. She is a beauty though.

I found the stabling to be to my satisfaction. I looked around as long as I could without arousing suspicion--I did not want to appear a horse thief. Most of the animals in the front were draft horses, either local beasts sent for shoeing, or belonging to some caravan. There were only a couple of riding horses besides my own, and none anywhere near so fine. I could hear other animals in the back, but, having no legitimate reason to enter, I made my retreat.

When I returned to the inn, I found that the bar had become considerably more crowded. Since I was going to be eating anyway, I signaled the bartender that I had returned, and took a seat at a small round table near the fireplace. It was then that I noticed the girl.

She was very young--no older than five certainly. Her brown hair was so rumpled I wondered if it had been combed yet that day. Her clothes were clean enough, but her face was smudged where she had brushed forgetfully with the fingers she was using to draw in the cold ashes. Her dress was all ruffles and ribbons: fine enough almost, I thought, for a princess; and yet, as she looked at me, I felt I had rarely seen any child, even on the streets of the border cities, who seemed as waif-like as she.

She went on drawing a little more, watching me; it was obvious I was intended to notice that she already knew her letters, since she was drawing words in the cinders; though at this distance I couldn't read them. Finally she came over to me, with the shyness of a child who has been told not to speak to strangers, but isn't sure _why_ not.

"You're an Elf, aren't you?" she asked without further preamble.

"Yes," I replied, unable to keep from smiling at her ingenuousness.

"My foster-brother's an Elf," she announced, informatively. Anything else she might have told, however, was cut off abruptly by a gruff voice.

"Anne, don't bother our guests. Go in back for your lunch. And stay out of the fireplace from now on; you're trailing dirt..." he broke off as she fled through the swinging double doors at the rear of the room. She flashed a look at him, or perhaps at me, that was almost impish as she left, though; and it was clear that in spite of his gruffness, the man was not really very angry with her.

"I apologize," said the man, extending a hand to me. "I'm Curzad Ohmsford, the manager of this inn. Do you mind if I join you for lunch?" He was a solidly built fellow with grizzled brown hair and slightly bushy eyebrows. He seemed as friendly as anyone of his type, though he wore a faint, perpetually worried expression under the smile.

"Not at all," I replied. If anyone here would know everything there was to know about the happenings of this Vale, it was bound to be the innkeeper.

"I hope Anne didn't bother you. She gets the oddest notions at times."

"She didn't," I reassured him. I had a notion of my own brewing in the back of my head, that this child might very well be the orphan girl I had been sent to find out about, and I decided to test the waters. "She yours?"

The Valeman shook his head. "No. But our family is the only one she has now. Her mother died a couple of months back, and there were none of her own folk to send for to care for her, so far as anyone knew. Adrianne asked me to look after the child as she was dying of the fever. So what else could I do but take her in?"

"Fever? What kind?" I asked in only partially pretended shock. I had heard my father mention the name Adrianne before, though I could not at the moment remember in what context. But I had guessed right; this was almost certainly the right girl.

The innkeeper shook his head. "I don't know. It wasn't anything catching, because no one else got it like, that regular summer fever. Our Healer couldn't make any sense of it. Haven't had much summer fever around here--it's been dry this year. Dry and hot. Hear it's been the same everywhere." He went on talking about the weather for a bit, and it took a while to steer the conversation around to a more productive topic. Eventually, it was the Valeman himself who came to the point he had obviously intended to make from the start--the whole reason he had proposed to have lunch with me.

"You're from the Westland, then?" he stated, nodding. "Where exactly?"

I lied.

"Probably wouldn't have, then." He rubbed his chin.

"I beg your pardon?" I said.

"Just my younger son. Well, my cousin's son really. We lost his mother, my cousin Naomie, to the wasting sickness some years back. But his true-born father was an Elf, and I wondered if maybe you'd known him there?"

"The Westland's a big place," I pointed out. My heart was beating loud enough that I was sure it would be heard if there were any unfriendly ears to listen.

"The boys aren't here at the moment," he went on, as if it were of no account. "Marek wanted to see Shea this summer--Marek's Naomie's brother: Shea's uncle--and Flick wanted to go as well. They're inseparable--closer than born brothers."

The conversation weaved along through the meal, and Curzad Ohmsford told me, with very little prompting, a good deal of what I wanted to know--no, needed to know.

Allanon had charged me with finding out everything, not only about the death of the girl's mother, but about the girl's present safety. Even reading between the lines, it was clear the innkeeper had seen nothing that would warrant alarm. I was still bothered, though. Something was not fitting together in this in quite the way I was trying to make it go. I was eventually left to puzzle it out on my own, since the innkeeper had other duties to attend; and gradually the common room emptied. Finally, I went to check on the progress of the blacksmith, and also to see what else I could find out around about.

I had very limited movement in the village, since most country folk don't take kindly to strangers nosing around theirs or anyone else's private business. Cities are better than hamlets for moving unnoticed in. I did, under the guise of boredom, manage to wander down the road a pace, and check out the house Allanon had mentioned. It was indeed a fine, old house--much finer than I would have believed might be found in such a place as this. It had been well secured--by the innkeeper, I guessed--and it was impossible to get in to discover any more information that way without leaving obvious signs of a break-in. I debated the possible value of what I might find against the risk, and decided it wasn't worth it. I had learned, essentially, all that I needed to know. So what was it that was compelling me to look for something else?

At least I was able, by engaging the smith in conversation, to get a look at the horses stabled at the back of the livery. They were, as I suspected, boarders: that is, they were animals belonging to locals, and which were kept there all the time. Most of them were riding horses, since people who have a use for drafters also have the space to keep them. It may seem strange that I should care what animals were stabled there; but you can learn a lot from horses sometimes. I guess you might say, too, that I had a hunch. It proved itself out; although I ended up feeling more confused than ever.

Because in the next stall back was a grey lady that might almost have been sister to my own. Though she did not have the same sparkle, whether from an intermix of lesser breeding, or simply from dwelling among folk who do not care for their horses as we do, still I could recognize her bloodlines.

I was not as surprised as I might have been: after all, the innkeeper's foster son was admittedly of Elven heritage. But when I noted the resemblance to my own Westland-bred mare, the smith agreed with me, and commented:

"Too fine a horse to go to waste. She'll be too old for fine paces by the time the girl's really old enough to have much good out of her."

For, it appeared, the horse belonged--by theory of inheritance at least--to the little girl, Anne.

As I waited for dinner, I watched the girl, with her dark hair tied back now in a rough pigtail, cleaning up the mess she had left earlier on the hearth with exaggerated care. She glanced toward me occasionally, but either she didn't dare or didn't care to approach me. She disappeared after a while with the ashes. By the time she reappeared, I had struck up a conversation with a local tradesman. He seemed reluctant at first to speak to me, but a couple of beers and a couple of laughs eased his hesitation. I went silent though, pretending deep interest in my drink, when the girl reappeared. The tradesman was more astute than I imagined, and he followed my gaze, allowing our exchange to lapse.

Carefully, the child piled pine needles into a small nest on the grate. She was not, I thought reasonably, going to be allowed to light the fire on her own. Still, she played with the needles for a long time, stopping now and then to simply stare at them.

"Queer little bit of a thing," my companion commented, resuming the conversation in a slightly lower tone. "Of course, her mother was odd enough herself. But I wonder sometimes what's going to become of her. Curzad has a good heart, but still..."

"Why? What's the matter with her?" I wanted to know.

"I couldn't say exactly," he mused, stroking his sturdy chin. "Too old for her age is part of it, I 'spose. She reads and writes as well any child in school, I hear, and her only turned four this summer; she's smart as a whip, they say. But little ones that bright don't suit people around here so well. And of course, her mother wasn't Valefolk any how. Though wherever she came from, I can't help but wish there'd be some of her own folk to want the girl. No matter why her mother left 'em."

"Does anyone know where she came from--the mother I mean?" I asked cautiously.

The brawny fellow shook his head, then downed the remainder of his mug. "Your guess is as good as mine," he shrugged. "And ye've obviously traveled and seen a good bit more kinds of people than me."

I thought that was the end of what he had to say, but he added thoughtfully, "Though...something odd happened with that Trader in the square, right before she died."

"What was that?" I asked, carefully half-interested in the bottom of my glass.

"I don't know...strange, dark little fellow, might have been a Rover; never seen him come through before. One minute Adrianne was looking at his merchandise, the next she went pale as paper. I saw it myself. He started laughing--a nasty sort of laugh, and she turned and...almost ran away, it seemed like. Funny way to treat a customer. She took the fever right after that. I've wondered what he said to bring on such a shock."

"Was the little girl there?" I let my tone tell him that I was appalled that the child could have seen whatever had so startled her mother. But what I was more interested in was whether this mysterious Trader could have seen the girl and guessed she was Adrianne's daughter.

My companion scratched his chin again. "No, she wasn't. I remember thinking about that. She was over here to the inn a lot, even before..."

He begged off of having another drink, saying he had supper waiting at home, and departed.

The little girl went back into the inner part of the building without speaking to me, in fact hardly looking in my direction. Shortly after, my meal appeared and occupied my attention for some time.

It wasn't until after dinner, as I lounged at the same table, near the hearth which the young bartender had finally kindled--for light, rather than warmth--that I noticed that she had come back in and was watching me from the edge of the firelight. When she saw me looking at her, she edged over again.

"Are you r'lated to my foster cousin?" she asked.

"I'm afraid not," I said.

"Oh. Uncle Curzad was talking to you before," she explained. She paused a moment, lacing her fingers together intently before she went on.

"I never saw a Elf before, except for Shea. He's not a _real_ Elf. Elves _are_ real, you know."

"Yes." It was difficult not to smile too broadly at her comments.

"Are you from a long way away--in the Elf land?" she asked, her tone emphasizing a sense of drama at what it must be like to be from 'a long way away.' She seemed remarkably articulate for child of four; at least I thought so: my own quiet nephew may not be the standard to go by. At any rate, it seemed as if it might be worthwhile to engage her in conversation.

"Yes, I am. I'm from the Westland. Do you know where that is?"

She slowly shook her head.

I took my bearings and pointed. "That way," I confirmed. "Weeks and weeks away. Hundreds of miles."

I thought her interest was beginning to waver at this point. But suddenly she looked at me solemnly, quirking her eyebrows together as if I might be the only person to solve a difficult predicament.

"My mother went away to heaven. And I have to stay with the Ohmsfords. Everybody says I'm an orphan." Her face didn't look as if she were apt to cry; but her voice had taken on an uncomfortable quaver.

"I know, I'm sorry," I said. "But you have your uncle to take of you." I was fairly certain, from what I had seen and heard here that there would be no reason to take the girl away. For which I was admittedly grateful, since it would have amounted to kidnapping. I doubted very much that the burly innkeeper would let _anyone_ else take charge of the girl without very good proof of who they were and what they were about.

"But I'm _not_ an orphan," she said.

Surprised by her rejoinder, I thought of what it might have been like to lose my parents when I was barely old enough to remember them. "Do you know what that word means?" I asked, wondering if anyone had bothered to explain things to her.

"Of course," she said, almost scornfully. "It means you haven't got a mother or a father. And I'm not an orphan."

Before I could question her assertion further, she changed the subject, "I'm not s'posed to talk to people--to strangers, unless Uncle Curzad says so."

"Your uncle's very wise to teach you that," I told her, wondering again just exactly what the reason was I had been sent to look for her. Of all that I had deduced from my conversations, that was the one thing I could not discover. Allanon himself had told me that it was better that I did not know anything more about her. But I am, by nature, far too curious. It makes me well suited for this work; but at the moment it was driving me crazy. I didn't like traveling half-way across the Four Lands without ever knowing why I had done so.

"But I've got to," she told me earnestly, and guiltily, and funny kind of look came into her eyes. "Do _you_ know?"

"Know what?" I asked. I suddenly had the idea that this was what she had been talking to me for all along, and had just been working up to it.

"Do you know where my father is?" Her hazel eyes stared intensely at me.

The question startled me; I paused and stammered. "No. I'm afraid I don't," I told her with earnest regret. And it really _was_ an instant before I realized that I had just told her a lie.

I was so stunned by what had just gone through my mind that I couldn't move for a moment. I sat staring at the little girl as intently as she had been staring at me, and if she had been older she would probably have thought something was the matter with me. But for an instant I was held fixed where I was as everything fell into place.

I had supposed, from the first, that the girl must be one of the distant heirs of the old Shannara royal line; Allanon was always trying to keep track of them. Even now, I realized, I had been searching the girl's features for some evidence of Elven ancestry--that funny little quirk to her eyebrows perhaps. If anything here seemed connected to the Shannara heirs, it was the absent Shea Ohmsford, who was also an orphan. But Allanon had sent me to check on the _girl_, so I had kept looking in that direction with her as well, because I had not been able to think of any other explanation for his interest.

My father had told me long ago that he knew things about Allanon that I did not. I had always taken that as a kind of subtle warning not to meddle in matters that the Druid didn't want me concerned with, which is how I'm sure my father meant it. But now I looked at the statement in a different light. There were certainly things my father knew that I had not. I remembered the buzzing of something half-remembered in the back of my mind when Curzad Ohmsford had called the girl's mother Adrianne. But now I could recall overhearing a snippet of conversation between my father and the Druid: my father speaking that name as if it were someone familiar to both.

I stared at the girl again, not certain...quite...about the leap of understanding I had made. I began looking for something else in her childish features, something I could not satisfactorily find, except perhaps as a blur, or perhaps in the oddly familiar intensity of her regard; I doubted my own wild conclusions.

Yet... Allanon himself had said it--_I trust you in this with more than you imagine._ And there was the distractedness in the days before he had sent me on this errand. Though how he had possibly known what had transpired here, so far away, I did not know. There are some among the Elves who are said to have the second sight. And I've heard enough hair-raising tales about people _knowing_ things about their loved ones that there was no reasonable way to know: about the birth of children, about soldiers coming home, sometimes safe and sometimes not--lots of stories about people knowing that somebody had died. And enough stories about Allanon to believe just about anything.

Just as quickly as I had surmised the reason for my journey, I realized that I could not say anything to her, as desperately as I wished to reassure her.

And there was something in her that pleaded to be reassured, begging with her eyes--she was a child desperately lost of all connections. And yet--_How could she have known? Why did she ask me?_ I wondered--there was something more than a little girl looking at me out of those eyes, no matter whose daughter was. The strength and nature of the imploring gaze was not like that of any child I had ever met, and it sent chills up my spine to resist it.

"Anne, what did I tell you about bothering our guests? And it's time you were in bed anyway." Curzad Ohmsford's voice drifted into the fixed tableau we made there by the fire, breaking whatever force had locked us in place. I tried to steady myself again, while the girl blinked at her guardian.

"Go on, Anne," his tone grew a little sharper.

A sudden transformation seemed to overtake the girl. Her face clouded over with a passionate rage and her small hands tightened into fists. She stamped her foot upon the floor.

"A am _not_ an orphan!" she said, and fled through the back doors.

"I'm sorry," I repeated softly, dazedly, after she was already gone. "I'm sorry."

"She's got to learn..." Ohmsford said regretfully. "She's having a difficult time. You'll beg her pardon, I hope."

"Of course," I murmured, but I was thinking of the child's eyes. _She'll never learn_, _not really_, I thought._ If she does it will kill her_.

I did not see her again, and for that I was grateful. The remainder of the evening, I spent telling harmless tales of my homeland and my travels at the urging of a gathering crowd that had too rarely seen one of my race among them.

I departed as early as I could manage the next day, going forward alone along my intended path as carrier of the message Eventine had sent with me, the supposed real purpose of my journey. I asked all the same kind of questions, and heard the same kind of bitter answers; but even understanding the pertinent necessity for this caution, my heart was not in it. It was back in the hills with a little girl who was trying to believe that somewhere, someone was waiting for her.

It was over a month before I saw the Druid again; and knowing what I knew now, I felt every day of it. I had managed in the course of this assignment to become, more or less, a permanent addition to the royal courier staff. So until such time as Prince Eventine saw fit to release me from service--as the original plan had run--I was stuck in the capitol.

I was not certain why--even for the sake of secrecy being maintained--that I was not simply sent with an official message to Glade. So I sat for a week and a half in the quarters I had obtained in the city, and thought dark thoughts about the change in my status, and wondered what on earth I was going to say to Allanon.

He showed up finally, without any apparent deference to--or even recognition of--my agitation. I was grilled thoroughly on every aspect of my journey and every nuance of my conversations, particularly my discussions with Curzad Ohmsford and the incident the tradesman had told me of. I ought to have been completely mystified by the Druid's veiled reactions to the information I had obtained, but I wasn't, and I wondered miserably if it showed, or if it even mattered at this point.

"You're sure the Rover didn't see the girl?" He kept coming back to that point.

"The man seemed pretty certain," I said. "And he was bothered by the idea, too."

"Then she's safe, as much as she can be," Allanon concluded at last, as if saying it took a considerable load off of his mind. I imagined it did.

"Are you just going to leave her there?" I heard myself asking. Indignant, I sounded indignant. _Stupid_, I thought, _I'm being really stupid_.

He looked at me sharply then. And in a moment I knew that he knew what I had discovered.

"That," he whispered tightly, "is to go no further than this room, even to me, ever! Do you understand?"

"Yes." I must have soundly overly hesitant, for he placed a heavy hand on my shoulder.

"There are perhaps a score of people now living who know that Adrianne was _my_ Lady. The number who are aware that she bore me child could be counted on the fingers of your hands. You and I alone know where that child is now. Do you recognize the potential risks to her if anyone else were to discover what you have managed to intuit?"

"Yes," I answered, as sharply as I dared; though in truth, I had not been considering _all_ the complexities of the situation until he pointed it out. I wasn't sure why I hadn't, for it was as plain as the nose on my face: any enemy who knew the least part of this had a potentially very powerful weapon for extortion or revenge against the Druid or his allies. I had known that, of course, when I had gone on from Shady Vale without the girl; but somehow that aspect of the problem had been swallowed up in my troubled deliberations of her current estate. Even now, without understanding why it should matter so much to me, I was biting my tongue to keep from saying something I might regret. I knew that, for once, I was being too transparent.

"What is it, then?" the Druid demanded, stepping away from me, his voice barely on the reasonable edge of composure.

I let out my breath. I did not know exactly why I felt so strongly about this--after all, it was none of my concern how anyone else dealt with the upbringing of their child. But the girl's eyes haunted me. I felt determined to say exactly what I thought, and tried not to consider the consequences.

"I think you should bring her to you, sir."

He looked at me almost in surprise, rather than the anger I had anticipated; turning away, he shook his head. "There are too many risks involved. She is safe where she is now. Safer than she could ever be here. Even if I sent her to Glade, to your parents, there would be too many people who would have a chance to learn the truth. But no one in Shady Vale knew who Adrianne was, and no one could make any connection to me or to our business.

"You know, too, that the half-Elven boy, Shea, who is apparently now called Ohmsford, is a Shannara heir?" I nodded. "To bring her here might expose him as well. It was a calculated risk to send you there at all, but I had to know..." he trailed off. "They must be safe in Shady Vale, for I have no other, safer place for either of them."

"I can understand that, but..."

"What?" he looked at me irritably.

"She's your _daughter_!" I concluded, wondering even as I said it why I would risk Allanon's anger to make the point clear to him. "When was the last time you even saw her?"

The expected anger did come, though not for a moment. For a moment, his eyes looked at a distance I could not see. Then he blinked, and instantly his voice was as pointed as the finger he jabbed at me.

"Chestry Maleny, as far as you or anyone else is concerned, my daughter does not exist!"

"What about as far she's concerned?" I said coldly. "What about as far as you're concerned?" I swallowed hard. I had no right to say what I was saying, I suddenly realized, and I shook my head. "I'm sorry. It's none of my business, but...

"She knows something," I said. "I don't know what, but she knows something. If you had seen her, and heard her asking..."

He turned partly away from me for a minute. I did not dare to say anything else. I still wasn't sure how I had dared to say what I did; but the intensity of the feeling was gone, and I stood and shivered from its absence as I watched him. It seemed as if he were wrestling with something--not a decision, my instincts told me, for I think his decision was already incontrovertibly made--but rather, somehow, his own conscience. When I had stood to hear my errand in Glade those many weeks ago, watching his grief without knowing then what it was, I had not even recognized that he had a conscience, as much as anyone else. Maybe more so, I considered abruptly; and I felt ashamed, not so much that I had called him into question, for I still felt troubled at the thought of the little girl, but rather that I had forced him to reveal this before me. Unconsciously, I stepped back.

"I'm sorry," I said, "I'm sorry about your Lady. I never met her..." I wondered, trying to think if I had ever seen anyone who could fit the internal image I had developed.

Allanon shook his head. "Adrianne was never in Glade in your lifetime."

I had to blink before I realized that this was a somewhat cryptic comment. Certain things about the relationship between my family and the Druid had always faintly puzzled me. But I had always attributed the impression my father gave that Allanon had always been a part our lives to the force of the man's personality. There was something, though, about these words, or rather the way he said them, that gave me the same odd impression. I felt confused. I smiled faintly: well, at least I was back on more familiar ground again.

"I hope you won't hold what I've said against me," I said, wondering how much I had damaged any chance of continuing in his service.

He looked up. His face was still darkened by the aftermath of the turmoil I had seen before, but he spoke quietly. "That would be pointless," he noted, "since in doing so I would lose a fine aide.

"You've done well. Well enough that if you're willing to forego the leisure of going home for the moment, I would like you to come with me when I go north tomorrow."

I felt shaken and steadied all at once. This was more than I would have dared to hope. I had proved myself fit to take my father's place and more. I had stepped, whether he had been willing for me to or not, into the Druid's inner circle of confidence, and I had been allowed to remain. All the same, I guessed that I should not mention the girl to him again. It was none of my business, I told myself once more.

"I would be honored, sir," I said; and then, without the embarrassment that I had felt at our earlier exchange, I added in my own native tongue the thanks, "_Ne am 'nen_."

He took my hand in a firm grip. "Tomorrow, then," he said, and left me with my fingers still tingling in tune with my own astonishment.

Tomorrow, I thought, sinking down on my cot in shock. I would have laughed at myself if I were not still so surprised. What adventure lay before me tomorrow?

I laid back and clenched my hands behind my head. At least I knew now that I had Allanon's trust, and that meant more to me in bolstering my own sense of courage than, as a grown man, I liked to admit. I was pleased, all the same, and finally able--almost--to blot the memory of the Druid's daughter from my mind, while I dreamed about tomorrow.

**

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A/N:** And that's the end of the prologue. Just so you know, the name Chestry Maleny was meant to be in homage to one of my favorite children's authors, Kate Seredy. She has been largely forgotten, which is really a shame. She is also an amazingly good illustrator. Look for her work. 


	3. Chapter 3

**Obligatory Disclaimer:** The Shannara Universe belongs to Terry Brooks. This story is not for profit and is not intended to infringe on copyright. It is being posted here purely for the sake of sharing ideas.

**A/N:** Here's where the story finally begins in earnest--right at the end of _The Sword of Shannara_. This chapter is a bit long and rambly--a lot of backstory is involved. And as I warned before, Andrea is just a bit Mary-Sue-ish, but I'd like to think not _too_ much.

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**Andrea**

The air was unreasonably still. Not even a dust-twister stirred as far as the girl could see. Although it was overcast, as it had been for days now, the air was stuffy, as though the hidden sun could still turn the summer plains into an oven.

_Just what do you think you're doing here?_ Andrea asked herself half-aloud, frustrated by the lack of any answer that might make sense.

"Well, girl?" she whispered to her horse. The mare snorted. There was no help from that quarter. Clearly, Starlight thought the whole matter was a mistake.

Andrea looked out across the barren hills to the north. A mountain range rose there in sharp jagged peaks; and beyond those mountains, she was certain, was the Skull Kingdom. She would have shivered if she had any shivers left, but she'd already been shuddering all morning. And still going on, in spite of any satisfactory reason that would explain what she was doing hundreds of miles from her safe home in the Vale, heading straight toward the most dangerous spot--according to legend, at least--that she knew of. It was, as Flick might put it, _really, really_ stupid.

Well, she wasn't about to add stupid to the list of other less-than-flattering things she had learned to call herself. She accepted that list--in part at least--with a kind of defensive pride: a tomboy--just because she'd always had to keep up with her foster cousins and their friends; stubborn, Granny Melaton said, and what was wrong with that? Andrea thought--all the people in the Vales of the Hill Communities had to be a little bit stubborn to stay there. But her stubbornness, unfortunately, was what was keeping her marching across this desert; and it was flagging rapidly.

Andrea kicked her boottip against the ground hard enough to jar her foot painfully. She was not sure what bothered her more--the need go on, or the fact that she was considering going back. _Ow!_ Her toes stung, a rebuke to her impatient gesture. She knew her temper was a problem; she knew that she was still considered childish because of it, and for that reason, if no other, she ought to eliminate it. But it still irked her that she could not make it work to her advantage the way most grownups could.

Andrea was thirteen and thirteen was a problem. Thirteen ought to be grownup, and was not. It wasn't as if she didn't have enough responsibilities around the inn and with Granny; and at first glance people generally thought she was older than she really was. But, for some reason, she was always considered by her elders to be slightly headlong. That--and thirteen--made her never grownup enough.

But she was not stupid. Not when she had always stood first in school--and not just in her own age group either--until Mr. Arron died last year and left them without a schoolmaster. Granny Melaton, however, always averred that there was a difference between smarts and sense: a person could have six of one, but not a half-dozen of the other. So not _stupid_, then, she reflected decisively, just _unwise_. Unwise was another of Granny's words, usually when Andrea had done one of those things the older woman considered unacceptably odd. It did not make her feel any better. Andrea knew that all of this _did_ make sense, somehow; but it would be hard to convince anyone of that when she had trouble explaining it to herself.

_I should just go home_. This thought, which Andrea had worn out in the last two weeks since she left Leah--until she hardly listened to it at all--had hit her with a little more force this morning when realized for certain where she was. She gripped harshly at the already crumpled leather of the reins. She had never been alone for this long in her life. She had never thought she could stand being this alone. And yet...was it just that she had gotten used to having no one to talk to but herself and Starlight? No one else to depend on? That _had_ been a little frightening at first, but it had passed quickly; now it seemed as if she had been so sure of her way that she had stopped worrying about it a long time ago.

But she was beginning to worry again. She was willing to follow her instincts only so far--this time she had followed them farther than she would have ever believed she dared--and common sense had to take over sometime.

She had to turn back. But when she had tried, more than once today, determined that there was really nothing else to do, her stomach tightened as it always did when she tried to fight against her instincts. Her lungs felt fevered and her hands tingled and her heart thumped loudly clear up into her throat. She couldn't turn around now. She couldn't give up. Not when she was so close to...

_To what?_ she thought, aggravated, scanning the silent horizon again. What could possibly be here in this awful, empty place? Shea, Flick and Menion would certainly never have come this far north, no matter how far afield the Prince of Leah had managed to drag them. If she really was where she thought she was, these plains marked the southern boundary of the Skull Kingdom. And even Menion Leah was not that crazy.

Andrea turned distractedly and stroked the dappled grey mare's velvet nose with her free hand, trying to soothe both the mare and herself. Until this trip, Starlight had always seemed just one of the inn's few horses--hers in a sense, but not really quite her property. She knew too well what kind of money was tied up in a horse--and how much money her uncle had tied up in raising her--to begrudge him the inn's use of the mare, even if Starlight _had_ belonged to her mother. Although the girl had never thought of horses as her life, the way the liverymen did, still...riding meant a small taste of pure freedom, and she had always liked to ride Starlight. Until now. Starlight was so skittish, Andrea had not dared to climb on her back since yesterday noon. The old horse wasn't any happier with their current direction than she was. And Andrea was getting tired of fighting with her

_No one_ would want to come this way, she reflected. Anyway, Flick would never allow Menion to get them into this much trouble. But then--she scuffed her toe again into the sandy earth--why was she here?

_My father?_ It was the crazy idea that had started her off on this journey in the first place. But like the kind of crazy idea it was--the kind that was true, she knew from experience--it had kept occurring to her from the moment she had considered it.

Andrea, like Shea, was a foster child at the inn--Curzad Ohmsford, it was remarked by some, had a talent for collecting foundlings--but Shea at least was a relative of the Ohmsfords. Andrea's mother had died when she was only four, and--though between them Granny and the Ohmsfords had taken her in and taken care of her--no one knew anything about her people, or even where her mother had come from.

The only thing Andrea possessed that could tell her about her true family was a small bundle of letters that her mother had written just before she died; Granny Melaton had given them to her the summer she was nine. But since they were all addressed to Andrea herself, and although her mother had written as though it were important for the girl to be with her father, there were no clues of time and place that might help her unravel the riddle. One thing was certain, no matter how often Uncle Curzad insisted that her father must be dead (or as good as, he occasionally tacked on), she knew that _that_ at least was not true. How she knew this, and why she clung to the idea so tenaciously she was not assured of herself. The memories that surrounded her mother's death were blurred, and all she knew for sure was that she had come to the inn knowing it, believing--in the teeth of her foster family's disapproval--that he would come for her someday.

She remembered the day: her ninth birthday, when she had sat reading her mother's letters for the first time in Granny's tiny cottage--the day she had decided: if her father could not come for her (as he surely would have by now, if he could,) then she would go to him. Perhaps he had forgotten that she was not a baby anymore, that she was nearly grown-up--old enough to start helping him in whatever it was he did that had taken him away from his family for so long. After that, she used every chance she had to travel outside of the Vale--chances that never seemed to come around frequently enough--to look for him. The visit at the beginning of the summer to relatives of the Ohmsfords in Heartland, a city south of Shady Vale, had been for that purpose, whether the Ohmsfords knew that or not. Unfortunately, she had always been hampered by the fact that her "looking" amount to just about that: looking--only looking--into the crowds that her adult guardians generally preferred to drag her along the edges of.

But now she was past her thirteenth birthday, and the fact that Shea and Flick had apparently left for Leah just before she got home had been an unrivaled opportunity to convince Uncle Curzad that she was old enough to travel on her own, without waiting for the Traders. After all, it was just to Leah--two days on the road. An uneventful journey and a safe return would contribute largely toward being allowed to go farther afield in the future--maybe even to the cities of the deep Southland if she went with the Traders' caravan.

This was a compelling need in her. Yet, she had been told so many times, even by the people who claimed to love her, to stop wanting this thing she wanted, that she didn't often try to explain it anymore: a strangely distinct sense of belonging that ran achingly through every memory of her mother, that she had lost at her mother's death. The only way she could express the concept was "family"--something more than she had with Granny or at the inn--something existed now only in the person of her unknown father. And in spite of her elders and her peers, she treasured of that father daydreams vague, along with an unwavering conviction that she would someday find him, or he her.

The realities of Shady Vale, however, precluded a young girl from being able to go out and do just that; though she had a sneaking suspicion that she could--that it would be that simple--if she ever had any real chance to try. In spite of what other people sometimes thought about her, she knew the grownups closest to her considered her a _mostly_ responsible child. Uncle Curzad was a fair man, who gave privileges where he thought they were deserved; Andrea knew at heart that she really did have more of these than the average Valechild, and certainly more than any fosterling deserved; so chafe as she might at her restrictions, she had rarely disobeyed him.

So she _had_ meant to go home after finding the Prince and her foster cousins gone from Leah. Even when she had gone with the trading caravan to Varfleet, she hadn't intended to go any farther than the border city. Often enough the following of her Senses (which seemed to have little to do with common, ordinary sense) was prevented--by her own occasional better judgment or that of her elders. Though often enough, it wasn't, so that people looked at her a little askance at the results. She had a Sense sometimes of knowing that someone wanted to find her, or sometimes when she was looking for them, she knew just where they were. Handy, of course, but a little uncanny all the same to the people of Shady Vale when anyone realized that it happened again and again. For a time after she discovered the talent, she had done it just for the fun of it--a rare chance to show off among her peers--until Granny had been forced to make so many excuses to explain it that she forbade Andrea from ever doing it again. Not that that had actually stopped it. Ignoring it or finding ways to keep people from noticing she was doing it still didn't stop her from _knowing_. It was that same Sense, stronger than it had ever been, that had taken her to Varfleet, even though she knew she would be in trouble, probably lose all her treasured freedoms, and would never be able to travel anywhere outside the Vale again until she was old and grey. But if it was her father...this time she had to find out.

Shea and Flick had gone with Menion on a hunting trip, an _extended_ hunting trip according to his father's steward, so she had some time. She would have to confess when she got back, but at least no one would miss her and worry. She cringed at her reasoning, more so now as she realized she would never get back to Leah before Shea and Flick.

Going into the Northland! Even if the stories about the Warlock Lord weren't true (though Andrea had always made a point of believing that they were--and now she wished she hadn't), there were still the rough people who lived and traveled in the Borderlands, and Gnomes and Trolls besides. The border folk did not frighten her _so_ much. She had half a notion that her absent father was a trader in something...stolen goods perhaps...that forced him to stay in the Borderlands. There were trade routes among such people, even in the far north, up into Troll country. It was the only logic she could find for where her instincts were taking her.

Still...there had even been a rumor spreading through Varfleet that the Druids' Keep had fallen to a band of Gnomes, and it was said by some that they were in the service of the Warlock Lord. This was not widely believed, for it was well-known on the border that a command of the Elven army had been patrolling Paranor the past three summers. The Eastland trading company's captain had posted double guards all the same: Gnomes came out of the Eastland from time to time; no point in taking any risks. He had thought her mad when she left the caravan a day and half north of Varfleet, shouting after her a list of dangers that would have satisfied even Uncle Curzad. How she had managed to avoid those dangers as she came north all alone--for she had met with no one since then--was a mystery she did not want to investigate too closely. The inner Sense that had pointed her north instead of south out of Varfleet had been more than a mere compass guiding her. Or else why had her path across the plains been so ragged from any true line? Why had she stopped sometimes in whatever cover was available, silently listening for far too long for a simple rest? This compulsion, never leaving her side, had become the driving force of her days, and her guardian at night.

It was not much of an excuse to use back home, however. The sensible Valegirl part of Andrea called-Ohmsford, incredulous at herself, could not think of what she would say when--and if--she got back to the Southland.

The mare nudged at her stilled fingers, stirring her from her reflections, "I know," she whispered, "I'm frightened too, girl." Just not frightened enough to turn back. Although she had begun to doubt the compulsion altogether, she couldn't help feeling it would be senseless to go back at this point, with nothing whatever to show for all her trouble. The pit of her stomach, which rebelled at the idea of going on with this madness, rebelled even more strongly every time she tried to turn around.

"I guess we'll just have to go on." But how far on? That worried her again as she resettled her hold on the reins, and Starlight followed her in disapproving resignation down the northern hill slope.

The day wore on, and in its oppressive silence it seemed worse to Andrea than any of the days before. Very soon she would be forced to go back, whether she would or no. _There are no trading companies this far north_. There weren't even any trails. The hills spread out toward the north and the mountains, and to the south in an endless, rolling, wasted plainland. There was no visible life--not even a buzzard in the sky today--and the dying scrub would not be enough to graze Starlight even after tonight. Could she let the horse go, hoping she would wander back to some trader who knew the Ohmsfords? Andrea wished, not for the first time, that Starlight was like one of those fairy-tale horses: you could simply tell her to go home, and she would do it. She couldn't take Starlight much further, even if she had to go on alone. But she didn't feel she had the right to lose the mare by just letting her go. Horses were valuable, and anyone in the borders who found a stray horse wasn't likely to return it.

She looked back the way she had come, and was awed suddenly to think of the vast distance between herself and the inn at home. She was struck with a sudden urge to run and run and run without stopping until she crashed, breathless, through the front doors.

Starlight, apparently impatient with her inattention, tugged on the lines. Then, without any other warning or obvious reason, the mare began tossing her head. Animals had Sense about some things. Something was going on that Starlight did not like at all.

Andrea felt it now, too, a strange, rising, irrational panic, as she listened to the impossible stillness. Somewhere, under all this quiet, something was happening. The feeling held her spellbound, as she looked to the now closer mountains rising jagged to the north, at the heavy dusky sky, and down at the ground. She could almost feel it waiting under her feet.

Then, something _did_ happen, releasing the long-held breath of the world. The dark, grey clouds that had dimmed the sun for the past two days suddenly roiled at the north end of the sky, and as she watched, the turbulence spread. No storm she had ever seen was like this. This looked like the end of the world.

A sharper jerk on the leather lines in her hand brought Andrea's attention back to more immediate problems. Starlight uttered increasingly terrified snorts. As Andrea tried to hold the mare, the ground rumbled with a low sound that grew and grew, like wagons out of control on a cobbled street, coming nearer and nearer. Starlight pawed frantically. Horrified that somehow she was about to be destroyed, horse and all, Andrea took the reins in both hands.

"It's alright, girl," she said. Which of course it wasn't. She spared another glance at the writhing clouds that cost her a few more inches on the reins; the sky was _boiling_, or so it seemed. The jagged peaks of the Knife Edge seemed to be dancing before her eyes, half a second later she realized that the ground was moving under her feet. "I'm _not_ going to die, not after all this. Calm down, you stupid horse!"

Andrea had never been in an earthquake; Starlight probably never had either, but she thought she knew more about it than the girl. Even with both hands on the reins, the mare was stronger. The lines were jerked through her fingers, as Starlight pulled back and reared, then galloped wildly away, careering madly on the bucking ground.

"Starlight! No!" Andrea was forced to step backward for balance as the mare broke away; and in that instant, the overhanging edge of the hillock on which she had been standing collapsed. She spun around trying to get her footing again. There was nothing to grab unto, and she slid, clouds of dust rising around her, rushing down her throat to muffle her scream.

When she came to halt at the bottom of the hill she sat up, coughing and blinking. She was covered with dirt, half buried in the sand. But she was not hurt as far as she could tell, except for the sting of the grit in the welts the slipping leather lines had left on her palms; she tried to brush the dirt away and winced. The ground was still rocking, and the low rumble went on and on, far longer than reason, underneath her, far away and everywhere. Andrea wanted nothing more at that moment than to just hug herself as close to the dancing earth as possible until it stopped; but more sand rolled into her back, and suddenly the thought of the whole hill coming down on her changed her mind. She would be better off in the open. If she could get up.

As she gathered herself to move, trying to shift herself out of the dirt, she heard another sound: the crunching of sand underfoot--not her own feet. The light changed, and she looked up, startled, from worn black leather boots, and up and up. This sudden stranger wore a robe belted over leggings, and a long full traveling cloak, all black. The cowl of the cloak was pushed halfway back on a dark head to reveal a man's face, lined and weathered, but not yet ancient, as if time and the elements had worked hard upon very resistant clay, and though dusky, his countenance stood pale against the darkness of his hair and beard. Above the angle of his nose, Andrea met two deep-colored eyes, so brown they were almost truly black, and held there for what seemed an age in the short space before she could blink.

_What!_ the thought echoed, not entirely her own. The stranger's eyes flickered for just an instant, as if in surprise; then they were dark and hard again. "Here," he shouted over the rumble; he was holding out a hand to her, and pulling her out of the dirt and to her feet.

"Who...?" It came out in a gasp.

"Later. Now, come with me." The man's grip on her arm tightened; she was being nearly carried along after him until she got her feet under her.

He led them in a rapid half-run, half-stumble across the shaking earth, keeping to the flat open spaces as much as possible; though several times they were nearly knocked off their feet by the shifting, sliding sand. Finally, the rumbling slackened. He stopped their uncertain progress at the top of a low hillock.

Not sure how long the respite would last, Andrea stared up at the tall stranger--and he was very tall: her head did not even reach his shoulder. Her thoughts were rattling her more than the unsettled earth.

_No, that's impossible!_

Her first question--who this stranger might be--was, surprisingly enough, not very difficult to make a guess at. When she had come back to the Vale from her trip south, Uncle Curzad had told her all about the Druid Allanon coming to see Shea. That story, still fresh in her mind, along with all the descriptions she had heard of the wanderer historian in tale and rumor matched the tall man in black beside her well enough. After all, how many people were _that_ tall?

Still, if this man were Allanon, the answer to the second question--what had happened when she met his eyes back there--became too difficult to manage. In spite of the obvious supposition that she would meet him someday, her mother's description of her father in her letters was very vague. Vague enough to match the man standing beside her. Or--assuming they weren't one and the same--Allanon, she realized, wondering in sudden amazement why that idea had never occurred to her before. But the description _had_ been vague, perhaps purposely so. Her mother had counted on something else to tell her daughter the truth; Andrea had always been sure it would--that unaccountable Sense she had about people would tell her when she had found him at last. In a hundred different daydreams, she had imagined meeting him. But never once had she imagined meeting him in an earthquake in the Northland. Or that her father might be Allanon.

Never.

And now... Her heart leapt faster instead of slowing at this rest stop, and her hand felt very small in the dark man's grasp; at least the sand had rubbed off. What was she thinking! She couldn't be right...not about both.

The stranger was staring intently northward. The ground had finally stopped rumbling under their feet; and now the low noise was fading from the distance and was gone, a faint, far away cracking sound from the mountains punctuating the stillness it left. At last, as if in awareness of her anxious, impatient stare, the man glanced down at Andrea.

She would ask the first question first. It wouldn't bother her so much to be wrong about it. Without any other preliminary, she said, "You're Allanon, aren't you?"

"Yes." _Did he sound tired? Or annoyed?_

Andrea felt a twinge dissolving outward from her middle; somehow it found its way up to her eyebrows, making her feel as though they were trying to crawl past each other. "But... then..."

Allanon dropped to a crouch beside her, putting them eye to eye, and clasped her by the shoulders as if she were a small child. "Andrea. I need your help." If his words were calculated to bring her sudden and silent attention, they were successful. Pausing, he glanced north again. Before Andrea had a chance to even organize her jumbled thoughts back into words, he broke in, "Shea Ohmsford has defeated the Warlock Lord, but the Knife Edge Mountains are collapsing." He looked back at her, the dark eyes fixing on her own again, overriding her shock at his words with firm determination. "If he has not been killed he may be trapped. I need to find out where he is, if he is still alive, in order to help him. Do you see that hill with the rocky overhang?" He pointed ahead and to the left. "Make a camp there, and gather wood for a fire. I must go on ahead."

Finally Andrea found her voice. "But I know Shea Ohmsford. I want..."

"I'll find him faster myself," Allanon cut off her sudden outburst sharply; Andrea shut her mouth. He had the stride of her and that was a fact. Besides which, she sensed, perhaps from a certain note in his voice, or perhaps with some natural acuity of childhood, that she had better do as she was told.

She could see the place he had indicated, where a tall rock projection angled out of the north side of a hill; a good landmark. But now she was thinking of the sandslide. And she had never been easily cowed. "What if there's another earthquake?" she asked doubtfully.

He shook his head. "I don't believe that will happen." Which made that final; he looked north again.

Andrea turned her eyes north as well, absorbing at last the full sense of Allanon's words. It had missed striking her, it was so far beyond belief--Shea! Shea, who was supposed to be someplace back in the Southland. Shea who could be dead or dying out there somewhere, while she argued. Indecision vanished. "Alright, I'll make camp," she said, though as she said it she wasn't sure what she could make camp with. Almost everything she'd had with her was on Starlight's back. The horse was probably miles away by now, headed, quite sensibly, for home.

"Then go." After a short glimpse around, east and south, Allanon started down the north side of the hill.

She did not move as immediately as his words had insisted, and he had not paused to see whether she would. She felt dazed, taking another deep breath as she watched him disappear over the next hill, and letting it out slowly. Too much to think about! Still, she had better think and walk; aggravated, she ground the sand under her feet, making her strides as long as possible. She felt a little giddy--that was _Allanon._ What had he said? Shea defeating the Warlock Lord? Then the stories _were_ true. A vague and fearful image formed out of firelight tales rose in her mind, powerful and terrifying. Obviously Shea, Flick, and Menion had gotten into more trouble than she would have ever imagined. Her heart was still beating too fast. If Shea had been fighting the Warlock Lord, heaven only knew what might have happened to him.

_Nothing, please, nothing_, she whispered. In a few moments' time she had walked out of real, dull, ordinary life and into a legend, and for the moment she could only wait to find out the ending. Some legends ended with the hero's valiant return, but some ended with the hero's tragic death. And unlike stories around the fire, she discovered, not knowing what would happen, not even being able to guess what would happen, was not so much exciting as downright uncomfortable.

Looking at the pinnacle of rock, she took her bearings, wondering momentarily how Allanon was going to find her again; she had a sudden suspicion that he purposely would not, then put it out of her head. If he was trying to rescue Shea, he probably wasn't going to leave her in the wilderness alone either. Snagging a stick from a lone, low bush, she devised a trailsign--and fortunately the soil was more compacted here--so she could be sure of finding the rocky outcrop again herself. Then, though she was feeling shaky after the experiences of the past half hour, she pushed her hair back from her face and set off with dogged determined in search of firewood.

There were only a few small dry shrubs in this direction, adequate for kindling maybe. By the time Andrea had gathered a prickly little bundle, she had traveled a fair distance south. Finally she began to edge west toward a line of hills, riddled with ravines. The vegetation seemed to grow thickest where the rocky bones of the earth stuck out, giving the roots some purchase on their environment.

As she skirted one such outcrop, Andrea found the grey bulk of Starlight in an area of clustered rocks and ledges. _Oh, no!_ _Probably the mare's leg was broken, and..._the Valegirl caught herself before she laid her hand on the mare's side: it was not moving in any rhythm of breathing. Starlight was dead. She could see it now--the angle of the horse's neck--but at least perhaps that had been quick. Feeling that too much had happened this afternoon, Andrea stood for what seemed like a horribly long time while guilt welled up in her, staring at the dead mare until the slow release of salt tears made her eyes ache.

Finally, she blinked and her indrawn breath made a half-sob. She had to do something. She rubbed her face on her dusty sleeve, then sickly undid the cinch straps and pulled heavily on the saddle, trying to free the lower saddlebags. She struggled with it for five minutes until she found she could no longer bear trying to manhandle the horse's dead weight. And there was no way, either, to fend off the scavengers that were finally gathering above in a sky from which the clouds were rapidly clearing, drawing back into the north as if their threat had never been. Only the dark specks hung like leftover shreds of evil. Andrea wept aloud as, at last in almost a panic, she took blankets and what saddlebags and canteens she could from the trappings, and followed her trailsigns hastily and blindly back.

When she got to the ravine that ran below the base of the landmark pinnacle of rock, her eyes had dried, as much from dust as the lack of spare energy for anymore crying. Dropping her load helter-skelter, she sat on a low stone, trying at first to squeeze out a few more tears, to ease the burning of her eyes and her heart; then, when she had exhausted all the good in that, trying to regain her composure. Her breathing evened out, though she was left feeling weak. Fighting off the images that plagued her mind, she cast about for something, anything else to think of...Shea...was lost and maybe dead, too--anything might be true today...no, she didn't want to think just yet. Seeking to outrun the tears that were springing up again, she left the packs and headed off in another direction, toward the northwest where the hills grew even rockier. This time she came across some larger wood: scrawny half-dead trees, littered with broken limbs. Trying to keep her mind only on what she was doing--and not altogether succeeding, her thoughts straying here and there, and somehow mostly back to the inn, where Shea and Starlight ought to be safely right now--she made trip after trip until she was sure that she had gathered all the convenient firewood in the area. In the sudden stillness, when she had done sorting and stacking it, she was a little surprised at the industry of her desperation; there was enough to keep a fire going all night and probably for tomorrow's breakfast. Better yet, she had located a small spring of sweet, cold water not far away, coming out of a crack that looked fresh enough to have been opened by the earthquake. She washed the tears and dirt from her face and carefully filled all of her canteens and other containers with water. At last she felt she could endure looking into the bags she had scavenged. Here was one of the foodbags; but it was not the one with the hard biscuits.

Andrea laid out a circle of stones for a firepit near the south side of the ravine, carefully away from the overhang; she was still remembering the earthquake. But there was nothing more than a faint, occasional hint of a tremor, which became so infrequent she eventually stopped listening for it. In spite of weeks now of constant practice, using flint and steel and tinder suddenly took long enough to make her feel thoroughly exasperated, but she finally got a fire going and began to cut up dried meat and vegetables for soup. She would have preferred the hardtack, and indeed, there might be some hungry, desperate going without it later. But at the moment, it would have simply been easier. Andrea found cooking, in her limited experience, tedious; Curzad Ohmsford had never let her near the kitchen--paying customers had to eat the stuff, he said; still she had learned enough from Granny to make soup, and even biscuits if she didn't get too distracted with the stove, but she really didn't have a lot of patience for it. There was a value right now, though, in boring, time-consuming work--it afforded an opportunity to keep her hands busy and let her mind think. She needed to sort out what had happened this afternoon.

There was some connection that tied everything together: Shea, Allanon, the Warlock Lord... Why was Shea in the Northland? And how could he possibly have defeated the Warlock Lord? Though all she really knew of that dreadful being came from stories of ancient horror; if even only part of it were true, a simple Valeman could not possibly stand against him. And Shea Ohmsford was just that, not a warrior or prince of the Elves or the borders brought up to do grand deeds.

Though, she reminded herself, Shea was an adopted child of the Ohmsford's as well. He was half-Elven; and he, too, did not know who his father had been; he had never cared to know, although Andrea knew Uncle Curzad would have told him if he had asked.

A recourse she had not had. Except for Granny Melaton, perhaps, who was the only other person in the hamlet besides Curzad Ohmsford who had been a friend to her mother. Granny had brought the girl up, as much as Uncle Curzad had; and Andrea knew as much about her mother as the old woman could tell her. But whatever the old midwife knew about her father, she would not tell, even to Andrea.

So she was still left wondering. Something had happened back there, when her eyes met Allanon's in that split second, something that she was certain she had felt before. She couldn't describe it; but whatever it was that her mother had expected to tell this wayward daughter who her father was, couldn't that be it?

She rubbed gingerly at her palm where the sliding traces had stung. She had washed the dirt away, but it still felt raw. Cutting the hard, dried meat had made it worse; she put her knife down for a moment and went on thinking.

Well, for other evidence there was the matter of her name. Everyone in the Vale called her Anne, a shorter, more common name used in the Hill Communities--if anybody at the inn had mentioned her name to the Druid when he had been there, they would have said Anne; but Allanon had used her right given name: Andrea. Only her mother had ever called her that. Even Andrea had conceded at last to writing her adoptive name on her schoolwork, though she stubbornly spelled it with an "E" on the end--which seemed to have a bit more distinctiveness. So, solid evidence number one: he had known who she was...really was.

All the same, it puzzled her. Even if he was her father, how had he recognized her after so long? She had been a baby when she came to the Vale. She looked like her mother, she supposed. Granny had told her that, though her own plain features in the glass seemed to Andrea herself to bear little resemblance to the glowing beauty of her earliest rememberings. But there must be some likeness in her. Or had he experienced what she did?

Andrea sighed. And what if he wasn't her father? Explain it, then! She remembered whispered hints of mystical powers. Picturing the tall man again, she decided she would not be surprised. She wondered whether she found that frightening. Magic then? Could he pick her name out of her mind as easily as...as the things Granny Melaton scolded her for. Did that prove something? Andrea knew that she herself sometimes did things that her neighbors found troubling. Yet she had not seriously thought of that as magic, not since she was much younger. It was just another way of sensing things, Granny insisted. Andrea gritted her teeth; Shady Vale was a long way away, and for the first time in her life she realized that she never wanted to go back there again.

Feeling distracted at this train of thought, Andrea picked up her knife and started slicing a carrot, dropping the sections into the steaming pan. She returned to her earlier line of reasoning.

It simply didn't make sense. Allanon was a prominent figure of rumor: a philosopher, teacher, and historian, well known in the Four Lands. Too well known for her to be his daughter and not have known about it.

Unless, she thought, her mother really was what some of the Vale people had imagined. She pushed the idea away quickly. Her mother had denied it in her letters; and she did not want to believe it. It hurt to think of it. Not her mother!

Finished with the carrot, Andrea retrieved a spoon and stirred the soup to mix everything, then stood up and walked around the ravine floor to ease the strain in her back and legs. It did little to help clear her mind. If it were true...she shook her head. She had wanted to find her father...planned to find him on this wild journey...yet this...this _could not be_. Andrea sighed--there was no point in fretting over it now, she tried to tell herself. She would simply have to wait until--and if--Allanon came back to learn anything for certain. The clouds had dissipated and the afternoon sun was falling low; Andrea looked north towards the crest of the hill, and east down the ravine repeatedly, but there was no sign of Allanon or Shea.

Almost an hour later, when it was already getting dark, she heard the sound of footsteps over the crackle of the fire. Andrea rose quickly as she looked up. Allanon appeared out of the dim, half-carrying a battered-looking young man who clutched a slim broadsword. For all that she was expecting to see her foster cousin, she barely recognized who it was when they came into the firelight.

"Shea!" she gasped, but the Valeman did not respond.

"He will be all right," Allanon said in a tone that suggested that she keep her voice quiet. He lowered Shea carefully to the earth beside the fire. The Valeman's eyes had been half open, but as he lay flat they fluttered closed. Slowly his muscles relaxed, and Allanon eased the sword out of his hands. Andrea got the blanket to put over him. He was thin and he looked exhausted, even in sleep. Trembling again, she foraged for an almost-clean rag from her pack, wet it and sponged some of the dried blood and dirt from his face. He was scratched and cut and it looked like at some point his nose had been bleeding, but there were no major wounds on him anywhere that she could see. When she'd got as much soil off his face as she dared without scrubbing hard enough to risk disturbing him, she looked up questioningly at the tall stranger.

"Let him sleep as long as he will," Allanon said softly, moving away. "He can eat when he wakes up." He tested the soup, then settled himself wearily against an outcrop of stone in the shadows away from the fire.

Andrea rinsed the cloth and wrung it out, then spread it flat on a rock near the fire to dry. That inexplicable feeling was tugging at her again. It shaped itself in the way that he had said nothing to her about the fire, the packs, anything. In the quiet with which he seemed to regard her presence. She reached outward in her mind to try to hold the impression in her hands and figure it out, but it seemed as slippery as wet glass. She almost had it...then...exhaustion struck her like a heavy sack. She was tired but not this bone-weariness. Involuntarily, she looked up. Shea?...no, though he was an echo of this. She pressed it back from her, wearier just from recognizing it; still her finger sliding on the thread had traced it to its source. Was it possible to _be_ that tired? And here she was to complicate matters further.

She shook herself away from the thought. So far, she argued in her mind, she had been more help than trouble. Why should her presence complicate anything? Unless...

She glanced toward where Allanon was sitting. What had her mother said? Goodness knows she had the letters almost memorized, though she carried the worn, folded packet in her pocket even now. She was not about to look in it under the man's gaze however; so she pictured the page with its thin, beautiful handwriting, more unsteady at the last. There, almost to the bottom of the page, "...that is simply that you will know. I cannot be clearer." _Mother_, she thought, _can you be clearer now?_ Andrea felt sometimes that it must be her mother guiding and guarding her through all this. For surely something had.

If it was her mother, somehow reaching beyond death, to drag her through the Four Lands to this meeting, there was certainly no help from that quarter now. The strange compulsive feeling that had driven her to this point was gone, leaving an empty place inside her that hurt, that made her want to cry. As if some part of her sight had been cut off from use, and she was left groping for what she had lost. Yet, even with only her own Senses to tell her, she felt a strangely sure sense of conviction of it now: Allanon was her father.

As this conclusion settled irrevocably into place, Andrea experienced a harsh and sudden jolt. _What she was supposed to do now?_ She had been under the delusion that once she had found her missing father, everything would be all right. Just like that. Like magic. How could anything beyond the actual finding be less than easy? Her faith in her mother's conviction that Andrea should be with her father had made her certain of a happy ending. Yet he said nothing. Why? What was he waiting for?

Another glance in his direction did not help. Any amount of determination notwithstanding, Allanon seemed unapproachable at the moment, even if she had felt sure what to say. Patience was not a strong point with Andrea; she got up and stirred the soup restlessly again.

Trying to find some distraction, if there was no answer to be found yet, the Valegirl looked over at Shea once more; his face had relaxed a little, but the red lines and patches of cut and scrape were luridly dark in the firelight, and the youthful Elven features were shadowed with the beginning stubble of an unintended beard, his pale hair greyed with dirt. The sword he had clutched so desperately lay beside him. She edged closer to look it--an emblem of a hand holding a burning torch was engraved on the silver hilt; she ran a finger gingerly across the raised image. Staring at the blade, she wondered what exactly had happened, what Shea had done with this sword. The blade was clean. Yet, the Warlock Lord was a spirit creature, wasn't he? Had been, she corrected herself in awe, if what Allanon said was true. It flitted through her thoughts that Shea might have died...might yet die. But no, Allanon had said he would be all right. Shea had always been the one she looked up to, almost a brother, who stood up for her when Flick teased her or Uncle Curzad didn't understand her.

Andrea looked up with a start. Where was Flick? And Menion? She stood up slowly and went back to the fire, stirring agitatedly again at the soup. Certainly this would this be a less difficult subject to broach? She could not go on not knowing. When she heard Allanon shift his weight almost imperceptibly in the darkness behind her, she swallowed hard.

"Where are Flick and Menion Leah?" Perhaps it was presuming a lot that he would know, but Allanon definitely seemed to be connected with why Shea was in the Northland, and at the moment she had no one else to ask.

"In Callahorn," he replied. Andrea turned.

"A lot has happened in the Four Lands in the past few weeks."

And she had been walking right through the middle of it. She pushed her thoughts rapidly from that to something else. "How could Shea have defeated the Warlock Lord?" she asked incredulously.

"That sword," Allanon gestured, "is the Sword of Shannara. And Shea Ohmsford is the last heir of Jerle Shannara," he added to her astonished expression. "You've heard the legends."

"Yes." Andrea nodded, turning to look at the ragged unconscious form.

"Then the Warlock Lord is dead?" she asked.

"Yes." Allanon nodded slowly.

"Then what's happening in Callahorn?" Andrea made her way to where the Druid was sitting in the shadows. Now and then a flame leapt high enough to illuminate his features and make them visible. He spoke quietly.

"The Warlock Lord had sent his army against Callahorn. When he was destroyed, the spirit creatures which dominated the army would have been destroyed as well, since they were bound to him. The Elven army and the Border Legion should be able defeat them."

"A war!" Andrea said, a bit too loudly. With a glance at the still-sleeping Shea, she lowered her voice. "A Third War of the Races? And Flick and Menion are in the middle of it?"

"Flick was with the Elven King, Eventine, when I left them. And Eventine had been wounded earlier; so Flick is probably not in danger," Allanon replied. "I do not know where the Highlander is."

"Why aren't they with Shea?" Andrea asked after a moment. The two had always been so close; she would not have thought that anything could have induced Flick to leave his brother's side. That troubled her more almost than any of the other things she'd heard so far.

Allanon stared into the darkness beyond the fire for a time. "A party was sent out from Culhaven to retrieve the Sword of Shannara from the Druids' Keep. Shea became separated from the company while crossing the Dragon's Teeth mountains. The Warlock Lord's army had begun to move south--the Prince of Callahorn was in the company, so he took half the party to Tyrsis to prepare for the advance. Flick, the Prince of Leah, and I searched for Shea. We followed the army south, thinking that he might have been captured. Menion Leah went into Callahorn with a message for Balinor about the size of that army. When I finally realized that Shea was in the Northland, I left Flick with the Elven guard. As it was, I wasn't able to do much to help Shea. He did it himself." He trailed off with a glance at the sleeping form.

For a few minutes, the fire crackled into the silence. Andrea stared at her boots as she considered Allanon's account. The most incredible part of the whole tale was that it was _Shea_, ordinary, plain old Shea Ohmsford. She tried to piece together a chain of events that could have taken her cousins and the Highland prince to the Eastland to begin with. Had they been struck with the same kind of inexplicable compulsion she had?

_What can I do?_ At least she had to know for sure...she had to ask him. But Andrea, normally considered a bit audacious at the inn, wasn't sure she actually dared. How could she ask such a question? If she were wrong...

At last she hedged, "This afternoon..."

Allanon stood up and went to the fire. Andrea trailed after, fuming silently and wincing in self-consciousness. Allanon tasted the soup, then reached for the small bowl from Andrea's pack. He filled it and handed it to the girl. "Here."

Andrea took the bowl, the sense of frustration building within her. She tried again, "This afternoon, you..."

"This has been a long day," Allanon remarked, breaking in. "After you eat, you should get some rest."

Andrea looked down, aggravated, into her soup, and began pushing the chunks in it around viciously with her spoon--he was deliberately avoiding the question. A cold chill washed over her. Did that mean the answer, the real answer, was something she did not want to know? No, whatever it was, she had to know the truth. He had no right not to tell her. Andrea looked up.

"You're my father, aren't you?"

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**A/N:** Up next, a shorter chapter with a POV change. 


	4. Chapter 4

**Obligatory Disclaimer:** The Shannara Universe belongs to Terry Brooks. This story is not for profit and is not intended to infringe on copyright. It is being posted here purely for the sake of sharing ideas. 

**A/N: **Sorry it took me so long to post another chapter of this story. Between starting to work on "A Merciless Affection" again and a week's vacation, I got rather distracted and forgot. Kudos to Shanna for reviewing and reminding me! Thanks to cecelle for reviewing, too!

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Allanon**

Allanon stared into the low flames. Some variation of this conversation had been waiting for him ever since the day he had left Adrianne and her daughter in Shady Vale twelve years ago. And ever since Adrianne had died, he had debated whether it would be better never to have it. He had grown accustomed to thinking of himself as the last of his kind--it was better so, perhaps. If Andrea had remained in Shady Vale... But now she was here, and the already half-made decision that he had been putting off had become unavoidable.

What was she doing here? Few explanations seemed possible; none seemed likely. There was no reason she should be in the Northland. The fact that she had arrived at this point whole and unharmed was too improbable to consider, not without incredible luck, or--he wondered--some outside agency. If she were to have found him, recognized him at all, it ought to have been in Shady Vale. The possibility that she might do so had been of particular concern when, two months ago, he had at last sought out Shea Ohmsford to reveal to him his heritage. Yet the girl had not even been there. He had considered that a fortuitous coincidence, however it had come to pass. But now--for whatever the reason--she was here.

At least she had not found him until it was all over. Well, almost over, Allanon sighed inwardly, considering the sleeping Shea Ohmsford. He had also underestimated this young man. Shea would have questions, most with difficult answers; but he owed the Valeman that much at least. And then...

That was another matter. And another decision concerning the girl that had come suddenly much too soon. _No_, he whispered to himself. Adrianne had wanted this for their daughter, intended it. He could not shake the thought that she had somehow planned it, impossible as that must be. Yet, if she had reached beyond death, bound herself to the girl with a geas...

...As his own father had bound himself to Allanon until the Warlock Lord was destroyed. Breman would see it done. Allanon knew his Lady had no less determination in this matter. Nine years had dulled his grief, but not as much as he had believed, and not in the face of this; the thought was an unpleasant one--bound! And what was to be the unbinding? Had this expected meeting already brought it to pass?

He looked up at Andrea then, reminded inexorably of the time Adrianne had cut her hair and rode out in men's clothing into the very midst of the enemy, the surprise because it had been so unlike her to do such a thing. But she had saved Ker's life from a bitter betrayal that day. Allanon had to force the memory out of the middle of his vision to see the girl clearly.

Andrea was not quite dressed in boy's clothes, though the full, pleated riding pants and hair cut to the shoulder pushed--he guessed from his observations--the limit of Hill Communities' sensibilities for feminine attire. She was clearly Adrianne's daughter; Andrea's face was a shadowed copy of her mother's. But for all the similarity to those delicate features, there were marked differences. Adrianne had been clear and fair, while Andrea's complexion was darker, closer to olive; instead of red-brown curls, the girl's hair was a deep dun-color, almost, but not quite straight; and the eyes that stared at him anxiously, though shadowed now in the firelight, were not, when he had met them earlier, crystaline emerald, but a muddy green, almost hazel. Her shoulders were wide and square, and she planted her feet squarely as well; she held herself determinedly, in an attitude not very much like an ordinary girl, but more like a boy...a tomboy--ironically like Jean Ellristan, the once-hoyden Elven princess who was Andrea Jean's namesake--standing with her hands clasped together before her awkwardly. Hands whose shape Allanon could not help but recognize, since he looked at his own every day.

His eyes went back to hers then, seeking beyond the outward surface. Determination was there, yes; impatience, a strong sense of right and wrong, but also uncertainty and just a touch of fear. It was a quick perusal, but enough to assess her nature, enough to know that in spite of any flaws she had inherited from him, she was a girl he would not be ashamed to call his daughter. But the uncertainty in her eyes now was for that question: would he?

He might deny it; perhaps he should. An old reflex, to protect her at all costs, reared its head. But it was a price he was tired of paying. And the time for paying it was past: the Warlock Lord was dead. The link between this young woman and the baby she had been when he last saw her was tenuous. It reminded him of what he had missed, what he had lost. Irretrievably lost, he had imagined. But the fact that the girl was standing here offered the possibility of salvaging something. For a moment all the old plans and dreams surfaced from the murk into which they had disappeared nine years ago, as if Adrianne were still waiting somewhere, as if life could go on for the three of them; as if she had never died.

But, no--Adrianne was dead, he reminded himself harshly. And Andrea had not grown up to the kind of life that she would have if that were not so. She had grown up a Valegirl, not a Druid; his was a life that she could not possibly understand, but that her eyes were asking for, without her knowing just what it was she asked.

_Could he even allow her to make such a choice?_ Allanon knew too well what prices would have to be paid by walking that road, and by telling her the truth, he would be setting her foot upon it. He could sense the connection she was building already, a touch of mind to mind that had once been familiar in a time when there were enough of them left to call themselves a race and set themselves apart as a people--and he had been a fool to think that gift would not breed true. No, nothing he did now could be fair to her, either to deny her, or to give her that choice--to give her a life he himself found almost unbearable at times, a life she had not grown up prepared to face.

There _was_, of course, a third alternative: he could tell her the truth, then send her back to the world and life she knew. He could force the shape of the path that way. Undoubtedly she would not like the idea; but if he were to tell her anything, that should be the limit of it. If he were to tell her anything...

She already knew. The girl was not standing in the middle of a Northland night asking Allanon if he was her father for no reason. She was only waiting for him to confirm what she had sensed already, sensed without knowing why, a sense that was part of who she was: a Druid's Sense, not a Valegirl's. To deny her now would be to betray not only her, but everything Adrianne had hoped and dreamed as well, and that thought cut bitterly deep. There was nothing he could say that would not hurt the girl, whether a lie or the truth, and a tiny voice in his conscience--so long in service to the truth, even when it could not all be told--said the lie would hurt her more. And knowing that, he could not find enough other reasons not to tell her. Was she his daughter?

"Yes," Allanon said.

For a moment, neither said anything. Then Andrea found her voice again.

"W-why? Why...everything?" It seemed all she could manage.

Allanon sighed inaudibly. "That makes a rather long story. Sit down." Andrea seated herself across from him, the bowl cradled, forgotten, in her hands; in her eyes, an incredible mixture of hurt and curiosity.

"You were born," he began, "thirteen years ago, in a small village outside Arborlon in the Westland. We had wanted a child for a long time. Just how long..."

Allanon paused. "I am far older than I look; so was your mother. We were born and grown, even before the Second War of the Races."

"But...that was almost five hundred years ago." Andrea voice took on a note of uncertainty.

"We are of the race of the Druids, Andrea. Our ancestors learned to extend their lives beyond those of other men soon after the First War of the Races. But we pay a price for it in our children." Allanon looked away from her into the flames. "In all that time, you were our only child that survived to birth." He did not say anything else for a moment, steeping in the stillness of memories too bitter to share. Then he shook his head inwardly--enough of that.

"What do you know of the Second War of the Races?" he asked.

Andrea shifted her weight at the abrupt change of subject, and tipped her head slightly to one side, as if considering. "An army of Trolls came down from the Northland and attacked the Elves." She paused, but when he said nothing, she continued, "The army was supposed to have been led by the Warlock Lord. The Druid Breman forged the Sword of Shannara," the girl looked briefly in Shea's direction, "for the Elven King, Jerle Shannara. The Sword was supposed to be magical and enable the Elven King to defeat the Warlock Lord. I guess maybe he didn't, though, even though the Elves won." He watched her send another incredulous glance at Shea. "There was a legend about an heir of Shannara taking up the Sword when the Warlock Lord returned."

Allanon nodded, satisfied to hear her spouting this much of "legend" as true history. "Roughly correct. The Warlock Lord was not destroyed in the Second War of the Races, although he was banished. There were always those, however, who served him, not from fear or domination, but because of the power they hoped to gain. These men knew that when the Warlock Lord had replenished his power, he would be able to return to the physical plane. They did not want anything to stand in their way when that time came. They set out to do two things: to destroy the Druids and to destroy the heirs of Shannara." Her eyes had grown wide, and Allanon paused. "Eat your soup, it's getting cold," he admonished.

Andrea began eating distractedly; and Allanon continued. "As the Warlock Lord gained power, even before he returned to the physical plane, he was able to aid in this destruction. About two years before you were born, Shea's father was killed. I took Shea and his mother back to Shady Vale to live with her relatives there. The Westland was being scoured by the Warlock Lord's emissaries in an effort to destroy every remaining heir to Shannara. You were also in danger, and when you were a little less than a year old, I took you and your mother to the Vale as well. We thought an insignificant village in the Southland would be a safe place for all of you.

"For you and Shea it was safe enough, but not for your mother. There is a magically-induced fever, one for which there is no cure." Another aspect of the death that had stalked them through the years, waiting its chance to strike. The faces of those it had taken paraded through his thoughts, his Lady's the last, but not the least sharp among them. Allanon hesitated, "I don't know how much you remember. You were only four."

"I remember," Andrea murmured, and he saw the glint of memory in her eyes--though she had been so young--and wanted to see what she saw there for himself. He was too tired, though, to make the attempt, even if she would allow it. There was a long pause. "She wrote letters for me...when she knew she was going to die, I guess." A look, confused and angry, came back onto the girl's face.

"Why did you leave me there after she died? She wanted you to come and get me."

_You knew I couldn't, Adrianne_, he thought; but another voice inside answered quietly, _How many times has necessity come before everything else? _He spoke aloud to drown it out. "It was too dangerous, Andrea. My life was no life for a child. When I found out that your mother had arranged for Curzad Ohmsford to care for you, I decided it would be better if I left you where you were."

"But you never even came to visit," Andrea protested. "You never even sent a letter."

"I was known and often followed. If our enemies had any reason to suspect that I had business in Shady Vale, neither you nor Shea Ohmsford would have been safe there for very long. And I had no safer place for either of you.

"Was Shady Vale so terrible a place to grow up?" he asked abruptly. Limited in scope perhaps, he had known, but he perceived the people there as good and steady folk, even if they had little use for the larger problems of the world.

"I...don't know," there was an odd sound in Andrea's voice suddenly, as if she were mastering tears. "I guess not..."

Allanon asked in a softer tone, "Tell me of your life there." She had spent these years in ways he could only guess at, and he needed to know the truth of it. Perhaps enough memories would come to the surface of her mind to give him an impression of her years there without having to probe.

"Curzad Ohmsford took me in," she said hesitantly, other thoughts warring in her eyes for precedence. "He had room, of course, and Granny didn't when I was little. I could have gone there later...I've been spending most of my time with her lately anyway, especially since there's no school now--our teacher was old and he died. She's starting to teach me healing and midwifery."

"A very reasonable trade," he remarked.

"I _do_ know how to work for a living," she said, and for a moment the inflection in her voice sounded just like the innkeeper who had raised her. "I've washed and sewed and mended since I was five years old. A foundling taken in on _charity_ can hardly expect to be waited on."

The touch of indignance was faintly amusing. So, she was letting herself think for a moment that the Druid Allanon's daughter might be too good to waste her labor at a country inn? No, it did not bother him at all--she had learned lessons in childhood that would be harder if she'd had to learn them later on. He doubted very much that she had been a drudge--Ohmsford was too free with his own children for that. And that did not seem to be what was really bothering her.

"I'm practically grownup now. I can take care of myself." That lump was in her throat again. It was her turn to change the subject abruptly back.

"You still could have taken me with you when I got older. You could have sent for me or..."

Allanon found his patience being stretched thin at this unexpectedly pointed questioning of his decisions. "All my energies were concentrated on the defeat of the Warlock Lord. If you had been a boy, perhaps..." He trailed off as Andrea straightened with a jolt as sudden as if she had just sat down on a nettle.

"You mean, it was because I'm a _girl!_"

Her eyes were full of sparks; Allanon realized at that moment how very much she was his daughter. She had his temper, certainly. He had let himself say more than he had intended. Now explanations were required that would not be easy.

"I had always wanted a son," Allanon spoke slowly. "The responsibility for seeing that the Warlock Lord was destroyed was mine. The possibility for failure was great. I wanted a son who could carry on after me if it were needed. For a long time, I wanted that..."

Allanon looked away from her then. The harsh clarity of hindsight accused him. "It would not have mattered. I did not know how soon the Warlock Lord would be ready to attack. Even if you had been a boy, if I had become careless, if I had died, you would still have been too young to do anything."

When he turned back to her, the sense of regret had faded into contemplation. "Perhaps your being a girl had some purpose behind it. I might not have been as careful if I had had a son. I might have failed, and the Warlock Lord would have won."

There was silence for a time.

"I'm just as good as a boy," she said stubbornly, poking at the last of her soup.

"You were safer where you were," Allanon said. "You would be safer if you were there now. Why are you here?"

The girl's expression grew uncertain again. "I was looking for you, I guess. I didn't know who you were; and I didn't know there was a war going on. I just suddenly knew where to look... Somehow I've always..." She trailed off. "It sounds strange, just _knowing_ about things. But I always have."

Allanon nodded slightly.

Andrea continued, "I had followed Shea and Flick to Leah." The Druid's heart skipped a beat. "And when I started to go home...I felt like I should come north. I can tell where people are sometimes; but it never felt that strong before. And it wasn't Shea or Flick or Menion. I thought maybe it was you."

_Had Adrianne done this, after all?_

"Then today when you found me..." Andrea stopped. Her expression grew suddenly very earnest. "I _knew_ you were my father. I know that doesn't make sense, but..."

Allanon nodded again. A rudimentary ability to read the thoughts and feelings of others was born in her blood; but there were aspects of her gift that were different than anything he had seen outside the use of the magic. And how she had come to use it with as much as clarity as she seemed to when she had never had any training was a puzzle. She could block her thoughts, he had discovered, during that brief perusal earlier. Nothing too difficult, but tricky to get through without her noticing it was happening.

"Why did you want to find me?" the Druid asked.

Andrea looked as baffled as if she had been asked why the sky was blue. "You're my father." She was incredulous. "I thought families were supposed to be together." Her voice broke a little and she let her eyes drop. "Is that wrong?"

She certainly had a trick of making her arrows hit the mark.

"No. Most of the time, that's the way it's meant to be. But life is not always like that. Andrea, you don't even know me..." He paused.

"Have you truly been that unhappy?"

He thought perhaps something more of her thoughts would surface then, a wavering of her natural mental barriers that would let him see more of what drove the girl. Unexpectedly, for an instant her shields went up with greater force than he would have thought possible, then suddenly they simply dropped away, completely gone, completely open. It was possible she did not understand the degree of trust she was showing, but it staggered him.

"I don't know. I just..." her voice choked off. But what he read then in her mind and heart told him all he needed to know. "...wasn't like everyone else." The memories behind those words brought up the barriers again before he had very much, but it was enough.

"Maybe I don't know you very well," Andrea continued, more strongly now. "But I _do_ know you somehow. You're more _here_," she held up her hands before her, "than anybody. That sounds crazy, I guess."

"No, it's not." A little unexpected though. He had been guarding his thoughts from her a little more carefully than he would anyone else all along, but at her last comment he shielded everything. Yet that underlying connection remained. He found that he did not want to break it. She had only been four years old when Adrianne died; how much could she have learned with no one to teach her?

The fire crackled. Small noises trickled in from the darkness, and there was a smell of spring come at last to the Northland. Overhead, the night sky was cloudless and brilliant with stars. For a time nothing was said. Andrea finished the last few bites from the bowl on her lap.

Finally she spoke, a sound that was barely hopeful, "Will you take me with you now?"

Allanon felt very far away, lost in a private hell of thoughts and decisions all demanding his attention. He still had to speak to Shea as well. So many things to tell the young Valeman. And his earlier decision to send Andrea home after all this was threatening to disintegrate.

"Andrea, that requires a great deal of consideration," Allanon began. "If..." He broke off suddenly at a sound behind them. Shea was beginning to wake up. Both rose to their feet.

"You should stay out of sight." Andrea seemed puzzled, and Allanon said tersely, "Shea has been through a great deal. Seeing you here when he thinks you are safe in Shady Vale would be a shock to him, and he doesn't need any more on him right now."

Andrea hesitated a moment longer, her eyes stubbornly fixed on him, but Shea was already blinking sleepily. Nodding at last, she set the bowl down by the fire; then, with another anxious glance at the Valeman, she slipped back into the shadows.

* * *

**A/N:** I'll try to get the next chapter posted a lot sooner. Reviews help to remind me. Really! 


	5. Chapter 5

**Obligatory Disclaimer:** The Shannara universe belongs to Terry Brooks. This story is not for profit and is not intended to infringe on copyright. It is being posted here purely for the sake of sharing ideas.

**A/N:** This is a short chapter, but it essentially forms the junction between this story and _The Sword of Shannara_. This is basically chapter 34 of that book, but told from Andrea's POV. Consequently, there are a lot of quotes from the book—those parts were, obviously, written by Terry Brooks, not by me. I've used them because the chapter doesn't work otherwise! But, as always, this is meant as a tribute, not a copyright violation.

* * *

**Shea**

Andrea slipped down behind a large rock, where she could not be seen but still had a view of the campfire. Technically, eavesdropping was wrong--but her native curiosity had always given her a problem with that. And at any rate, she maintained, she couldn't get further away now without making enough noise for Shea to notice. So she braced herself against her rock and listened.

Allanon stepped toward Shea. "Are you feeling better?" he asked. He sat down on a boulder near the fire.

Shea nodded his head. Looking up he asked, "How did you find me?"

* * *

Shea consumed two bowls of soup while he and Allanon discussed what had happened. It was a long conversation, and some of what they were talking about was hard for her to follow, but most of it was concerned with the Sword. Andrea found the tale that unfolded incredible, even though it was being spoken with Shea's own voice. But Shea seemed somehow different too, even beyond the tiredness, though she couldn't put her finger on it; it was not that he seemed exactly older, but perhaps more...serious? 

Allanon was speaking again, his tone thoughtful. "I should have had more faith in you, Shea. But I was afraid."

Andrea saw surpised incredulity on the young Valeman's face.

"You don't believe me," Allanon continued, "but it's true. To you, to the others as well, I have always been something more than human. It was necessary, or you would never have accepted your role as I gave it to you. But a Druid is still a human being, Shea.

"And you have forgotten something. Before he became the Warlock Lord, Brona was a Druid. Thus, to some extent, at least, the Druids must bear responsibility for what he became. We permitted him to become the Warlock Lord. Our learning gave him the opportunity; our subsequent isolation from the rest of the world allowed him to evolve. The entire human race might have been enslaved or destroyed, and the guilt would have been ours."

It settled on her as she listened. This was hers. Centuries of knowledge and responsibility; it seemed suddenly to alter her perception of time. While tales of long ago had never seemed to her as far away and mythical as they did to most of the people around her, now all the history she knew seemed to shrink until it was as real as things that had happened yesterday.

"Twice the Druids had the opportunity to destroy the Warlock Lord, and twice they failed to do so. If I were to fail as well, then there would be no one left to protect the races against him. Yes, I was afraid. One mistake and I might have left Brona free forever."

There was a pause. _Because I wasn't a boy_, she thought. She could see clearly now why she ought to have been a boy, but..._I'm not useless! Not wanted?_ No, if he really didn't want her he would have simply denied that he was her father. Now, she would just have to prove to him that she could be as good as any boy. What would that take? She had won from Shea and Flick the right, reluctant as it had been, to tag along on some of their forest trips, mostly by doing everything they did, even if it took her twice the effort and not complaining about it. That privilege had been something, however, that had been gained over the course of time, and she wondered if she had that much time now.

Allanon looked down, then spoke again softly, "There is one more thing you should know. Bremen was more to me than simply my ancestor. He was my father."

Andrea leaned forward suddenly, forgetting to feel defensive, forgetting momentarily even to be quiet, though fortunately any sound she made was covered by the crackle of the fire. Bremen. The Druid leader in the Second War of the Races. Was her grandfather? But then, hadn't Allanon told her he was born before the Second War of the Races? Which made him over 500 years old. And he...was...her...father. Andrea gripped her arms tightly, almost digging her fingernails into the flesh to make sure she wasn't just dreaming all this.

Shea began to give voice to a protest, but stopped after a few words. Allanon continued.

"There must have been times when you guessed that I was older than any normal man could be, surely. The Druids discovered the secret of longevity following the First War of the Races. But there is a price. There are many demands and disciplines required, Shea. It is no great gift. And for our waking time, we pile up a debt that must be paid by a special kind of sleep that restores us from our aging. There are many steps to true longevity, and some are not...pleasant. Brona searched for a way different from that of the Druids, a way that would not carry the same price, the same sacrifices; in the end he found only illusion." He paused. Andrea wondered what requirement, however difficult, could allow such a thing to be. Allanon seemed no older than Curzad Ohmsford.

He went on, "Bremen had a chance to destroy the Warlock Lord, but he made too many mistakes and Brona escaped him. If the Warlock Lord had succeeded, my father would have been to blame. I lived with the fear of that happening until it was an obsession. I swore not to make the mistakes he had made.

"I'm afraid that I never really had much faith in you, Shea. In many ways I was unfair to you. But you were my last chance to redeem my father, to purge my own sense of guilt for what he had done, and to erase forever the responsibility of the Druids for the creation of Brona." Allanon looked up. "I was wrong. You are a better man than I gave you credit for being."

Shea shook his head with a smile. "No, Allanon. You were the one who so often spoke to me of hindsight. Now heed your own words, historian."

Allanon's back was to her, and she could not see his expression. He was silent for a moment, and when he spoke again, his voice sounded pensive. "I wish we had more time, Shea Ohmsford. Time to learn to know each other better. But I have a debt that must be paid--all too soon." Allanon stood up. "Your friends are close now, looking for you. When they find you, will you tell them everything I have told you?"

_As close as back here in the shadows?_ Andrea asked herself. What _were_ his plans for her? She might point out that Shea wasn't necessarily going to feel a whole lot better about seeing her here, even in the morning. Though she did wish she could get a chance to talk to him, and to Flick and Menion, if those were the friends Allanon meant.

Shea had settled back into the blanket. "You can do that better than I can," he mumbled sleepily.

Allanon stood up slowly. "I may not be able to, Shea. I'm tired, I've exhausted myself physically. For a time now, I must...sleep."

_Wait a minute!_ The only thing that kept her from shouting this aloud was Shea's presence. An unbidden sense of panic that she could not find a completely logical reason for welled up within her. Where was he going? Andrea wondered. Uncannily, she felt that he was simply going to vanish in front of her. And she was going to be left behind once more. _Sleep,_ he had said, but the way he said it meant more than something that simple. Somehow it meant leaving--not dying, she tried to reassure herself--but leaving.

Oh, no. He _wasn't_ going to leave her behind. She wasn't sure what she could do about it, but she wasn't going to be left again. Even if it meant...

_Not pleasant..._ her father's words rang through her mind, leaving a chill in the wake of premonition they inspired. Andrea paused in her thoughts, doubtful. Even if it meant...? Or _whatever_ it meant? Something like a memory in her that seemed ancient beyond her days went cold at the thought.

It was not as if she herself had asked it, but something else, some other voice apart from her own conscience, yet somehow connected to it. What was she willing to do? How important was it _really_, to be with her father? The world she had known up to now remained, calling her back to the Vale, reminding her of everything her life had been there. It hadn't been _that_ bad, had it? Not all of it? In spite of...

_No_, shook herself away from that line of reasoning. It had been bad enough--she knew that--even if it wasn't as horrible at this distance, in this moment, as the fear that pressed her. Was she so afraid, then, that she was willing, after coming so far, to instead go back to that slow, persistent misery for the rest of her life? And that was really the most important point: why had she walked into the Northland in the first place if it wasn't for this? _I can't even ask myself that_, she replied to the voice. _I've always known the answer to that. Or I wouldn't be here now._

Andrea focused her eyes again; Allanon was standing by the fire. She couldn't seem to put a word to what it was.

_Belonging_, that was the closest she could come. But now she remembered when she had last felt it, and been terrified she would never feel it again--the day her mother had died.

"Tomorrow," Shea mumbled incoherently. "Good night."

"Good-bye, my young friend." Allanon looked down at the sleeping form. "Good-bye, Shea."

* * *

**A/N:** Sorry that was a bit rough. In the next chapter, things get considerably more interesting. 


	6. Chapter 6

**A/N:** Another short chapter, Allanon's POV.

* * *

**Choices**

Shea was asleep. Allanon nodded quietly to himself. This limitation on his time was one of the things he hated most, for it seldom came in a good season. But now it couldn't be helped. He considered once more whether he could push things a bit farther, to see this through to the end, to Callahorn. But magic ate up the time faster--or perhaps, rather, more persistently--and he had been using it too often of late. Internal signals were telling him that if he did not pay his debts soon, certain irreversible effects would begin. Until now that had mattered very little, so long as the Warlock Lord was destroyed, but now he found he was not quite willing to die yet. It had better be tonight.

As he moved away from the fire, Andrea got up, all in a rush.

"Where are you going?" she asked anxiously.

Allanon looked at his daughter, oddly and awkwardly stalwart, standing at the edge of the firelight.

"Are you going to take me with you?" If her tone lacked anything in hope, it made up for it in determination. It sounded like a fact, not a question.

He should send her home to the Vale, he thought angrily, trying to convince himself. The Elven search party would find Shea within the next day or two at most. Andrea would go back to the safety of Shady Vale. And he...

She would never forgive him. Even when he tried to tell himself that it was best for her, that he would be preserving her from impossible sorrows and unendurable pain, he knew that being abandoned again would hurt her far worse than anything else he could do. Yet, what was necessary in order to take her with him would hurt her far worse than anything she had ever experienced before in her life. And it was not without risk, in spite of the generations of Druid blood running in her veins.

"It's not that simple," Allanon said. He paused. "You heard what I told Shea. If I were to take you with me now, there are things that must be done..." Allanon trailed off abruptly.

"I could do them. Whatever they are. I want to stay with you."

"You have no idea what you're asking."

Andrea looked him in the eyes then. "It must be very terrible," she said flatly. It was not that she was failing to understand--there was no doubt that, unknowing of just what she feared, she was still frightened by it, "but I am going with you."

_Why must she be so infuriatingly like Adrianne? And himself?_ he added. Allanon shook his head.

"You have lived in the Hill Communities all your life, and you know nothing whatever about what it is be a Druid." But even as he said this, he was uncertain how much difference that would truly make. Andrea was distinctly not a common Valegirl, and from what little he had learned of her childhood when he touched her mind, she had never held a comfortable place with her peers. That strange flash of ability she seemed to possess puzzled him. Certainly there were things she might be able do merely with the Druid gifts, even improperly trained. But far-sensing and location should not be among them, and he was too uncertain of how far those abilities went to dismiss out of hand the possibility that sooner or later there would be serious trouble for her in the Vale because of them. Perhaps more serious than either she or the Valemen could handle; for part of the problem there lay in the fact that, despite a certain practical hard-headedness that living under the Ohmsfords' roof must have bestowed on her, she did not _think_ like a Valegirl.

Allanon wondered if she had somehow picked up a trace of that thought, because she said, "But I _am_ a Druid."

"Not fully, not yet."

How much of it had he known himself, before the fact? Allanon tried to remember. Not much, really, he decided. As a child, it had been a vague part of the world of grownups. And his own memories of what he had known later were scattered beyond accurate sorting into time and place. Then, he had only been thinking of Adrianne, of the future, not the present. And while his own coming-of-age as a Druid was a clear picture in his mind, there were no emotions attached. He wished he could remember how he had felt about his own father at the time; it was blurred by too many other things that had passed between them. But the ritual words still echoed in his memory as if...

Allanon stopped himself. He was really considering doing this. Andrea _was_ of an age for it, if barely. It did not help that Adrianne would have wanted this, even insisted on it. To Adrianne, who saw her life more clearly, and accepted fate more willingly than he had ever been able to do, there would have simply been no question at all.

"There are prices, Andrea," he said. "Prices that you may not want to pay. And pain." Allanon watched his daughter's shoulders shake faintly.

"I want to come with you. I'm not frightened," Andrea demanded, the slight tremble giving away the lie in her voice. "You're my father. And that's the only thing that matters."

Allanon closed his eyes briefly. She was in earnest. But if he were to take her with him, those choices would be permanent ones, filled with regrets ultimately. Allanon was used to making difficult choices--choices, even, that hurt people, when it was necessary. But this was something different. This time, he found, it was impossible to stop his own reactions from getting in the way. He struggled to find some kind of compromise.

"Andrea," he said finally, "I want you to go back to Shady Vale; go back and I will come for you later." More time for these decisions, he thought. Yet even as he said it, he realized it might not be the truth. It was one thing to watch friends grow old and die, generation after generation, but not his own child. That was truly too high a price.

Andrea seemed to realize the prevarication as well. "Will you?" she asked, her voice full of hurt and doubt. _I don't believe you_, it was as audible to him as if it were spoken aloud. And somehow almost as painful.

_You can't have this both ways_. Either she was his daughter, and a Druid, or she was not. If he left her here, that would be the end of it.

Allanon's eyes locked on hers. "How brave are you?"

Andrea's gaze remained steady, though Allanon could sense her pushing down fear, trying to replace it with the same grim determination he recognized from within himself.

"I want to stay with you."

Nothing else was said for a moment.

"I'm not afraid."

Perhaps not, for she only had instinct as yet to tell her what to be afraid of. Those fears were mirrored in her eyes, but Allanon pretended to ignore them; he set his jaw. He expected her to be afraid, more afraid than this before it was over--it was her courage in the face of it that would matter; it did not change the decision he had made.

He folded his arms together. "Very well then."

* * *

**A/N:** Up next, Andrea's POV, and mysteries revealed. 


	7. Chapter 7

**Obligatory Disclaimer:** I forgot the disclaimer on the last chapter, but it still applies. The Shannara universe belongs to Terry Brooks. This story is not for profit and is not intended to infringe on copyright. It is being posted here purely for the sake of sharing ideas.

**A/N:** My thanks to those who are reading, and especially to those select few who have reviewed!

This chapter took shape very early on in my mental fan-ficcing processes on this story—probably when I was still thirteen years old. It's heavily influenced by my own personal teenage angst, and (as are many other parts of this story) by a made-for-TV movie that most won't have heard of but that some my age may remember: _The Incredible Journey of Dr. Meg Laurel_, starring Lindsey Wagner (who I admired as _The Bionic Woman_ from an even younger age) as the title character.

* * *

**Dreams**

Andrea tried to steady herself with a breath. The thrill of happiness--that _finally_ her life was going to be as it ought to be, as it should always have been--was being rapidly swallowed up by the growing sense that she was in over her head. A minute ago, the bravery had been easy: a matter of holding on to her wish like the treasure she knew it for and not letting go; but that was also when she hadn't been sure he would really agree. So was it sink? Or swim? She had come this far by faith, and she could only hope that he wouldn't let her drown.

"If there's anything you want to keep, get it now." Allanon bent and took two brands from the fire, then stepped away from the camp in the direction of the rock outcropping.

Andrea knelt quickly over her pack, an odd sensation of invisibility creeping over her as she handled the rough canvas. How could she know what to take when she didn't even know where they were going? Only one thing she could guess: it wasn't going to be any ordinary journey. She looked up at the still form of Shea Ohmsford in a huddled lump by the fire, and remembered what Allanon had said to him. Supposing she never saw the Valeman again? Supposing... The fear ran chill through her again, whispering _you are going to die tonight_, and she shook herself, trying to lose it. That couldn't be true. It couldn't.

Finally she closed her pack and stood up, only pushing the worn, folded packet that contained her mother's letters deeper into her pocket. With a brief glance at the sleeping figure, as if to prove to herself that she could do so without losing her resolve, she ducked around the corner of the rock face.

The ravine here widened into channels of sand running among islands of rock, pools of milky light and shadow in the moon that had risen, just past the full. Allanon had already driven the brands into the earth on either side of him. Moonlight and torchlight fell across a square of cloth, where he was setting in place the objects he took from a small, dark pouch. Andrea sat down opposite him, letting her finger graze the corner of the fabric; it was silk. As he placed each item deliberately, she watched, clasping her hands together to further preserve herself from the force of her own curiosity, which might otherwise have impelled her to pick the things up and look at them more closely.

There were two tiny bottles of thick glass with heavy stoppers, partially filled with something opaque. Whatever was in them--some kind of powder, maybe--was pale, unless it was the reflection of the light on the glass, against the dark square of cloth. Behind each of these were two thin flat strips of metal with lines etched across them, and laid to the side, some long strips of white cloth. And finally, in the center, something in a tiny leather case that remained completely unidentifiable.

"Andrea, listen carefully to what I have to say." Her eyes darted up to his face; the exhaustion she saw there was still tangible, and harder to turn away from than it had been before. This day had been so long, and horrible, and wonderful. It did not seem possible that only this afternoon she had not known all that she knew now; in those hours, and in the days of her journey, she had gained a lifetime, and Shady Vale was so far in the past that she need never, never think of it again. She blinked as Allanon began to speak.

"Men have always desired to extend their lives beyond the normal span of man's years. In the old world the means to achieve long life, even immortality, were endlessly pursued--even, strangely, as men sought new and better ways to kill one another. Even after the Great Wars, once mankind had learned again to think beyond mere survival, the dream had little changed. Over a thousand years ago, the Cult of the Dead arose in the Four Lands, preserving--for chiefs and kings, at least--the memory and possessions in death that none seemed able to perpetuate in life, and it continued so until the Druids came, bringing the promise of something better in life than an obsession with death.

"Still, the Druids were obsessed in their own way with death, and they sought their immortality more earnestly than most. Only their learning could restore knowledge to the Races without the dangers of the past, and their time for the guidance of the Races must be continued indefinitely to prevent such a thing as the Great Wars from ever happening again." He shook his head faintly. "Yet it was the Great Wars and their aftermath that had, ultimately, made possible what the Druids discovered.

"It was just after the end of the First War of the Races that some members of the Druid Council found a way to live, if not forever, then longer than other men. But the cost was high. Many died or went mad as a result of their experiments before they succeeded. And as I said before, what they found is not without its price. Most are not aware that it is this, chiefly, that sets the Druids apart from the other Races, and from the race of Man. That, and the oaths we have sworn in the service of the Four Lands.

"If you are to come with me now, you must become a Druid, in fact and oath, not merely by the inference of your birth, and you will have to pay that price. It is not an easy obligation. You will suffer pain and fear, more than you have ever experienced or can even imagine; there is much that you will struggle with for the rest of your life, however long it lasts. Because this will be irrevocable: once you have begun, you cannot stop. Think carefully," he said. "The choice is still yours."

Silence. Why must he stop speaking? The resonance of his voice was a sound she could listen to forever. Beside which, it seemed that every time he stopped, she found herself having to make her decisions all over again, giving the fear another chance to take hold.

"I want to come with you," she repeated woodenly, trying to ignore the prickle in her fingertips. She unlocked her hands, and surreptitiously flexed them, telling herself she must have been clasping them too tightly. Her eyes did not leave her father's face.

Allanon studied her--she could see him thinking, but disconcertingly she couldn't Sense what he was thinking, or if he might change his mind after all. She could always Sense emotions at least, and the thoughts behind them if the emotions were strong enough, often whether she wanted to or not; Andrea winced. But everyone else was _farther_ from her, if that was the right way to put it--how far she had not realized until today. And when she reached out, trying to guess his thoughts, it was as if her hand met a pane of glass, and his hand was there, aggravatingly, just on the other side.

At last, he picked up one of the tiny bottles, holding it up between them, and uncorked it. "These vials of powder," he began softly, "contain deadly poisons, one the antidote of the other, in addition to several other substances, the complete nature of which I will not go into at the moment." The invisible barrier blurred a little under her hand, as his will for her accept this, to comprehend that there was no time now for complex lessons, only this brief explanation, came through. Andrea moved her head faintly in a nod of understanding, and Allanon went on, "When both are given in proper amounts, the body is balanced on the line between life and death. Normally, only the soul could be drawn across that line, and the body would remain in the physical world. Instead, the elements of this mixture draw oneself whole into that limbo world--not living, yet not dead. There, the nature of that plane, and of some of these substances, cause changes which prevent us from aging as quickly as normal men."

He began to work deliberately, measuring out from each vial a thin layer of powder on two of the metal strips. "The process must be repeated at intervals, which at present we try to keep at between ten and fifteen years. Its eventual effectiveness begins to wear off in time: I have aged more quickly, subjectively, in the past two hundred years than in the two hundred before that."

Surely this was impossible. This was madness. This was...she bit her lip--a hard-headed Vale innkeeper's fosterling suddenly scared to believe that the world was full of so many things she did not understand. But she would understand them. All she needed was time and a teacher, and now she had both. Yet for now, there seemed so little time for...

"Any questions?" he interrupted her reflections.

"Is this...magic?" she asked, hesitantly, thinking suddenly of the frightening tales of magics that bound people outside time. The Druid Breman had--by a tale she had once heard--supposedly perished in just such a way, bound by the Warlock Lord's spell, neither living nor dead. She shuddered, realizing that she was no longer certain how to define what magic was. Magic was...magical, wasn't it? Not something that pulsed through her mind every day. She didn't know...

"Our ancestors," there was something bitter, and ironic, in the way he said the next, "the cautious group that they were, tried not to think so. Although the elements used are not quite...real. Any other answer would be my own suppositions, and," he looked at her carefully, "I find I don't care to burden you with those at the moment. So, you will have to decide that for yourself. Anything else?" His tone was unexpectedly light, as he said this.

_He's trying not to frighten me_, she realized abruptly, _just as hard as he was trying_ _to_ _frighten me out of this before_.

She could not get the old tale out of her head. "How long will it take?" she asked haltingly. In limbo, not living, not dead, he had said. She braced herself against the shiver that traced her back. "How long will we be..." And how would they ever get back? Yet presumably there _was_ a way, and her father knew it. Maybe it was better not to worry about that for now.

He glanced at the powdered strips. "A year, perhaps less."

A year was still a long time...to be caught between life and death..._deathdeathdeath_, the fear echoed. She swallowed at the lump it made in her throat.

Yet, now, for the first time she did not feel alone with that fear. She did not remember when it had happened, so gradually had it vanished, but there was no cold outward pressure under her fingertips. Instead, the glass had become a cloak, still a barrier, but encircling her with a quiet, gentle touch that acknowledged her fear, even if it could offer nothing but its own warmth to assuage it.

After a moment, Allanon spoke again, "Are you ready?"

There were a hundred more questions she might ask. She knew he wasn't telling her everything, in part because there was no time to do so; still, it was very possible he was not telling her all he might either. Shea had accused him of that earlier. At least, she knew what he had told her was the truth. She was not sure why she believed that her Sense about that had not been confused by whatever he was doing to keep his thoughts and emotions locked so tightly within himself, but she did believe it. _If I needed to know anything else, he would tell me._ No, she was not quite certain of that--she didn't know whether she knew everything she needed to or not. But for the first time in her life, she found herself not wanting to rebel at a grownup's desire to protect her from her own foolishness. Trust was an essential element in all this; if she couldn't trust him, ultimately nothing he told her or didn't tell her was going to make any difference. Trust...was there, foolish--as a faint stab of practical caution urged her it might be--or not. And as surprising as it might be to both of them--for she Sensed suddenly that this was true as well--she could not help it.

Faintly, she nodded again. It wasn't enough; she spoke aloud, the fear almost choking her with the word. "Yes."

Allanon was silent for a long moment, and though his eyes didn't move from hers, he seemed to be looking through her. Finally he took a long breath, and when he spoke, the words were even and weighted, as if he were speaking from memory. She saw herself come back into focus.

"This you swear by your consent: as we take life from death, so we must forfeit to death a part of our lives.

"Hold out your hands," he instructed.

Uncertain of what her role in this was supposed to be exactly, Andrea held her palms forward. Did that imply her consent, she wondered then, chilled.

"Death and life run together in the circle of time, balanced on either hand." Allanon took each of her outstretched hands in turn and drew a line with his finger across each wrist. The touch sent a spark up her spine, directly into the part of her brain where all the things she knew without knowing why were kept; her fear came from there, too, she realized, as it rushed out and through her. The sensation did not fade from her arms, even when she drew them back against her body.

"All gifts have a price. As we take up this life, we are obligated to give our lives back to the land and her people. This is the first oath of a Druid."

She tried to think of what such an oath would mean, since it seemed that perhaps she had taken it without realizing it, but her mind was too numb, too consumed with what was happening.

"In the circle of life and death, life and death meet here. Enter the circle."

One of those Flashes came. She never knew when they would come. But she saw the torches, more torches, all around. And a table. And a man with greying hair. And the surge of one emotion: _finally_--_finally everything_.

She blinked and saw her father again, a man with dark hair and dark eyes. There had been nothing of fear within that vision. Andrea wished she were that lucky. Or that brave. If she were a boy, as her father had been...

When the ritual quality slipped from his voice, he sounded even more tired than before. "Hold out your hand," he repeated. Picking up the tiny leather case, he removed from it an object, made perhaps of horn, that had the same shape as a chalk pencil, only shorter. It came apart in the middle to reveal a tiny, sharp blade.

Andrea flinched, suddenly understanding what her mind had been trying to avoid when he had spoken of the powders. There were a few medicines best given this way, but Granny had generally avoided them. Her wrists, where he had touched them, buzzed. Her fear, free and unleashed, hummed _deathdeathdeath_ in her ears. _I can't do this_, she thought. Then thought, _I have to_.

Allanon had held out his fingers, as if to take her trembling right hand, but he did not. He had seen her flinch. Suddenly ashamed, she answered the question, or challenge, that she saw in his eyes.

_Did_ she trust him that much? _Well?_ Later she was not certain if she had ever done anything so brave in her life. Fighting against every shred of sensibility in her body, slowly, as if through molasses, she extended her hand.

Although it did not exactly hurt her, as he took her hand, his grip was so firm that Andrea knew she could not have pulled away then if she had tried. She felt sweat break out on her scalp; and the night air and the smell of the torches' smoke caught raggedly in her throat.

"Be as still as you can." She relaxed her arm against his hold, not attempting now to keep it there by her own will, allowing the balance of pressure to stop her from shaking. She hardly dared to breathe, let alone move.

Allanon took up the tiny knife, and turned her wrist closer to the light. Andrea concluded then that it would be a good idea if she shut her eyes, and her lids fluttered for a moment; but she wasn't very good at taking this kind of advice from herself, and she stared, frozen in horrified fascination.

There was a silver flicker, and the slightest sting on the surface of her skin. Either the knife was very, very sharp, or her father knew what he was doing. Probably both. Blood welled up in a thin line as he tilted her hand back; Andrea had never been one to feel sick at the sight of blood--she had seen plenty as Granny's apprentice, and the old woman wouldn't have tolerated that--but she felt sick now.

"Hold your palm back a little. Like that." He took one of the powdered metal sticks, and, worked the stuff into the cut. She knew it must hurt, but she wasn't registering it, not yet. He tipped her hand forward toward her wrist to close the wound, then bound it round tightly with one of the strips of cloth and secured it. The numbness of fear, or shock, or whatever it was, was fading fast; an ache was already spreading up her forearm and the line of the cut stung like fire.

"This side won't hurt as much." The process was repeated on her left wrist, using the powder from the other stick.

_Oh really?_ she thought dimly. This time it did take longer to begin hurting, though maybe the stinging from her other arm dulled her ability to sense it. The pain there was increasing rapidly; she wondered, with helpless, captive interest, how long it would last. She closed her eyes against it. And how bad it was going to get.

It was spreading all through her now, a sharp ache from the right side, a dull ache from the left, flowing with the pulsing of her blood. Her internal sensitivities did not leave any doubt as to the progress of the poison, and the sensation of it in her veins was nearly worse than the pain--it was a terrified shriek that whispered to her that she was going to die. She wanted to open her eyes now, as if sight were a talisman that would keep her alive, but she remembered sickly the other reason she had closed them--the certainly her father was doing this to himself as well, and the thought, with its pictures coming unbidden to her mind, was tinged with redoubled pain. She wanted to cry. But a boy would not cry. If she were going to be as good, as brave as a boy...

She did not know how long she sat with her eyes closed, fighting the pain, fighting back the tears, while the cold hand of death drained her life away like water. Then she felt her weight, oddly light, being shifted, and she opened her eyes again unwillingly; the torchlight stabbed into them.

"_Andrea_," Allanon's voice rang inside her mind as well as in her ears. She shook her head vaguely as if to clear them, but the echoey quality continued. "_Come here_." He was pulling her into his lap and she, as if she were four years old again, let him. Except it made it that much harder not to cry. She did not realize she _was_ crying until she saw one of her tears splat against his sleeve.

_I can't help it_. This was unendurable. No matter what he thought, she couldn't go on pretending to be brave any longer. "I'm frightened," she whispered. "I'm frightened." Then the tears began in earnest, shaking through her, and she could not stop them. It was hard to say if they made things better or worse, while she was rocked in the cradle of his own pain, since there was nothing else to hold her.

_--Shhh_.-- She felt, somehow through the pain, his hand on her hair. _--It's easier to talk like this_.-- The echo was gone, and his voice was only inside her head. It seemed odd now to think that no one had ever thought _at_ her on purpose. It was the most normal thing in the world.

This steadied her for a moment. Only for a moment. The pain was getting much worse, and then worse, and then worse again. It was as if every bit of her body were trying to burst apart from every other bit. There was a red mist biting against back of her eyelids, and her fingers bit into her arms. She was beyond the point where she could even cry, and the dry agony in her throat was impossible to endure from one second to the next, and still it went on.

And something more with it: a rising of despair that took her soul, even from the safety of her father's arms, and stripped it bare to her future. She had seen death before, and been troubled and shaken by it; but she had never believed that it could truly have any hold on her, as she _knew_ now that it did. The fear had been right. She was going to die.

* * *

She started, as if waking up, her mind clearer than it had been the moment before. She could not remember the moment before. With an odd rush, and an impossible, sudden release of the pain, Andrea felt the pit drop out of her stomach. When she tried to open her eyes, there was no torchlight. Beyond the red mist floating in her vision was pale grey nothing. 

Then the bottom dropped out of everything. Andrea could see now, or thought she could--as clearly as there was anything to see, at least. Although she was not certain if her eyes were open after all, she tried closing them, and felt herself blink. She was falling, falling, falling into a whirlpool of red and grey mist. Around and around, until after a time it became almost restful, and she floated on it as if dreaming. Then Allanon was saying something; as if she were underwater, she couldn't understand it. She struggled awake again through the sleepy haze, and realized that the pain was almost gone; what little was left pulsed in time to an uneven rhythm that she suddenly recognized was her own heartbeat. The sound, or echo, of it became very loud in her ears.

Then it stopped. She did not have time to panic in the dull silence that followed. They were falling through the deep grey cloud at the bottom of the whirlpool and at last landed on their feet on what looked like grey nothingness but was solid enough to take immediately for granted, like the ground in dreams. And her father, beside her, was grey as a ghost.

_--This is...?--_

_--Yes.--_

This is all a dream, Andrea thought, amazed. She would wake up and...

_--It isn't a dream. It's very real. You must remember that_.--

Something was happening, something odd in the mist all around them. Then the apparently very real ground dropped away. The thought more than the actual feeling of his hand was on her arm.

_--It may be difficult to stay together.--_

_--What!_-- She fairly shouted the thought.

_--Through the shifts. It requires considerable control, which you do not yet have.--_

The sudden fear of being alone pierced her, as it had not in all the weeks she had just spent traveling by herself into the Northland. But she found that in this place fear was something like pain. She struggled for control, floundering through her thoughts. _--You said you would take me with you,_-- she pleaded, feeling a sense of betrayal.

They were spun again, and Allanon faded sharply for a frightening moment before reappearing, grey and ghost-like at her side.

_--I have. And I'm doing all I can. This is something you must do for yourself. You must concentrate on where you are.--_

_--But we aren't anywhere!_-- And she was falling again, through darkness.

Andrea looked frantically for her father. She couldn't see anything but a dim hazy outline, fading rapidly.

_--This is real, Andrea_.-- A feeling of something nearing alarm reached her. _--Concentrate on where you are--that's the only thing that can stabilize...-- _His voice faded out._ --If I can't find you again...the vortex will draw us back together in time. We'll come out at the Druids' Keep. Remember...--_

_--No!--_

The sound of his voice was gone, and Andrea was alone.

For the moment.

The odd, invisible pain ate through her, her fear made substantial in this place. It paralyzed her for a long time, as she dropped again and again, until she knew she must do something, anything.

Slowly, she argued back against the stinging accusation of betrayal. She tried to concentrate on what her father had said: however impossible it seemed, what was happening was not a dream. Her mind wavered with this thought, but finally, from some unexpectedly solid place within herself, she found she could accept that. And also accept that he had not abandoned her intentionally. He was here somewhere too, looking for her, and if she could manage it, she could find him here just as easily as she had found him to begin with.

The steadying of her thoughts slowed the shifting of the mist. _All right_, she told herself, _concentrate._

Out of the nowhere, a thin, high wail grew in the soft, silent swishing of the mist. Then another. It was the most horrible sound Andrea had ever heard, and it brought a scream to her own invisible throat; it sank through her ears into her very soul, chilling her with its threat of rending her with clawed, icy darkness.

She ran. There was only mist before her eyes, but at least the ground was there. And safety...somewhere?

_Father!_ The name faltered in its strangeness to her, but she thought it harder, over and over.

And she dropped again. The voices were gone, and he was there.

_--Good girl. You're starting to understand_.--

But clinging to him, she wasn't sure she was. It was more difficult to concentrate in this place than she could come to terms with. And again she slipped away.

Andrea did not know how long this went on. Her mind blurred and sharpened, and when it blurred she could only shut her eyes and fall almost, but not quite, into the oblivion it offered. A sound of voices, thin and grey, but without horror, brought her back again, and she opened her eyes hesitantly. There were forms of people, moving, speaking, fading among darker shapes like the walls of buildings only half-formed. She found suddenly that they were all around her; but they could not seem to see her--as if she were a ghost.

Now that she was conscious again, she found that the mist kept changing. Must have kept changing all this while, she thought with a shudder, although she was insensible to how long that might have been. The grey city faded and reappeared. The grey people did the same. They were not images of the real world, Andrea decided after a long time, as she had thought--had hoped--at first. They must be shades of the dead. She felt too inured to the impossible to be afraid of that idea by now.

At least they were far more comforting than the things that weren't--exactly--dead. There were horrible things that came, when the ground dropped away again--teeth and claws and darkness meant for tearing and slow torture and the extinguishing of her soul, looming over her as she screamed and screamed, until she wasn't there after all. Then she would bury her face against her father's heart, barely hearing, barely listening, if he said something to her. Sometime the ground wasn't going to drop away fast enough.

_Concentrate on where you are--that's the only thing that can save you._

She fought with herself, trying to make sense of what he said. There was a method in the madness, a connection with her thoughts that affected where she would drop. She could not stop it from happening, but she could elude the terrors if she concentrated enough.

There was more time in the grey city, fading and flowing. A time, while the monsters avoided troubling her, of forgetting even that her father was here with her, somewhere, until she could no longer find him when they pursued her. A long time while she sought refuge in the lack of consciousness of anything. And the uncomfortable sense of something changing and changing in the very fiber of her being ate at her; for she was still aware of her body, altered and spectral as it might be in this place.

When at last a time came that Andrea wondered if there had ever been anything else but this silent, solitary half-madness, she looked up and blinked and saw grey forms, not thin, not terrible, and solid as her own--and memory rushed in as if it had only been sleeping.

But it was not her father, though one of the figures seemed vaguely familiar in the same way; and the other figure was a young man.

"Grandfather?" she called, uncertain of how she knew this, but her voice was hoarse and did not carry here. Then she remembered. _--Grandfather?--_

The old man looked up. _--Andrea?_-- She began to move toward them, but the mists started to shift.

_--I thought you were dead.--_

_--...explain later_...-- his voice sounded in her head. Then they were gone. Andrea had not had time to think of following.

How very far away she was from where she had been! she sensed. This time the darkness had not made her forget. But she had wandered so far... Turning her thoughts, at last, after all this forgetting, to the only real thing for her in this whole horrible grey world, she willed herself with her father. But she was so far away, and there was only silence. Over and over she sought to force the mists to carry her in the right direction.

How long after that Allanon came for her, she did not know. Pain had been coursing through her again, the old pain of the poison in her veins. Her father's arms around her, a human touch, unknown as it had become in this horrible place, brought back memory and hope of life: real life, and she buried her face against him, not daring to sob out the substanceless tears that would not release themselves from her eyes.

_--I'm proud of you.-- _Oh yes, he was. _--You survived.-- _That was relief beyond measure. _--Now, try to concentrate_.-- The pain was growing again, almost as it had a very long time ago. An image was beating in her mind--the Northland plains, the ravine.

_--No. I need you to concentrate. I don't want to have to go looking for you. You can control this if you concentrate. Look_.-- He showed her. Superimposing itself over the image of the northern hills was a castle standing high above a forest. She had never seen it before with her waking eyes, but surely that must be the Druids' Keep.

Closer they came, and closer. There was a hallway inside, and colors of brown instead of grey. The pain was worse, and a throbbing in her head; and suddenly, the throbbing of her heart. She was standing in brown shadows on legs that abruptly would not hold her up, while the pain faded and faded and was gone.

She sank to her knees on a floor that was suddenly far too hard. But she did not remember any of this when she awoke, nor the tiny room where she pulled a dusty shirt from a small press over her head and tumbled into oblivion.

* * *

**A/N:** Up next—the Druids' Keep. (You'll note that I put the apostrophe in a slightly different place—in this AU, there have always been multiple Druids, not just one.) 


	8. Chapter 8

**Obligatory Disclaimer: **As always, Shannara is not mine. Just playing with what inspired me a long while ago.

**A/N: **Another short-ish chapter, and once again from Andrea's POV, even though that breaks the pattern I had set. We'll get back to Allanon's POV shortly. He's always much more interesting to write!

Thanks to Shanna for her continuing devoted reviews! I wouldn't mind hearing from others of you that are reading this. I know you're out there—the hit count tells me so!

**

* * *

Keep**

Andrea's nose tickled and she was cold; she opened her eyes. She was not in her own room at the inn, an idea that faded rapidly as awareness came back. The last thing she remembered was...the stones of the floor. The Druids' Keep? Memory returned in a rush, filled with so many things, wonderful and horrible, that it threatened for a moment to overwhelm her in its flood. But at last it receded a little, waiting for a more propitious moment to trouble her, for now letting her merey be awake.

Never in her life had waking up felt so wonderful. It was not simply relief, to have woken from whatever nightmares hovered on the edge of her memory. This feeling was of complete and utter refreshment, as if, after long weariness and deep sleep, she was totally alert, with no part of mind or body wanting to stay asleep for even a moment more. She luxuriated in the sensation while she took in her imposing, if minimal, surroundings.

The room was bare except for the narrow bed and a small iron-bound chest. A trickle of dust-speckled golden light came through the cracks of one of the two shuttered windows and fell across the stones of the wall and the floor. She watched the play of the motes in the air. The quilts were heavy and wonderfully smooth under her fingertips. But it was cold outside of them, and the chill seeped in over the top of the covers. The quilts, or maybe the air itself, smelled musty.

Dim pictures of the events that had brought her here were advancing through the back of her mind, slowly but steadily pressing toward the front. What was going to happen now? Where was her father? A vague sense of worry was prompting her to get up and go and look. He wouldn't just leave her? Uncertain of herself in this unknown place, she tried to Sense where he must be. She was unsuccessful, unless a vague recognition that he was here _somewhere_ counted. She had better get up after all, and let her feet help her find him.

Her plan to get out of bed was hampered, however, by the fact that, as far as she could see from here, she had nothing to wear but the shirt she had on, which, though it was oversized, was probably not adequate to keep her either well covered or warm outside of the bed. There might be something in the chest—she had a vague notion that this shirt had come out of that chest—and she was trying to work up the courage to brave the bare cold, when there came a sharp knock on the door. She jumped in spite of herself.

"Awake?" said a muffled voice.

"Yes," she croaked; her throat was scratchy. She coughed, swallowing at the dust-like dryness in the back of her throat, and sat up. The door opened.

"Good morning." It was Allanon. He tossed a brown bundle onto the foot of the bed, then went to the window in the wall behind her and threw the shutters wide. Sunlight and cold rushed into the little room. The fresh breeze cleared some of the staleness from the air, but it made her shiver in earnest.

"Good morning." Hesitantly, trying not to let her teeth rattle, but not quite sure how to convey what she really meant, she asked, "What...time...is it?"

"A half-hour past dawn." He must have known what an unsatisfying answer it was, because after a pause he went on as if he had meant to say it all along, "March or April, I think. The snow's off the ground."

"It's freezing," Andrea averred, huddling in the blankets. Then she paused. "March or April of..."

He glanced at her. "Yes, _next_ spring. Not quite a year," he added quietly. He turned away from the window. "The furnace has been dormant all winter. Even if we had the proper supplies to remain here, it would take days for the Keep to warm up to a comfortable level. Something there should fit." He gestured at the bundle he had brought. "Get dressed as quickly as you can. I'll be back in ten minutes. We're leaving as soon as we've had something to eat."

"Where are we going?" she asked, though as soon as the words were out of her mouth she considered how blunt her question sounded.

He opened the door again. "South: to Callahorn, and after that..."

Whether it was something unguarded in his eyes, or just the answer to her own fears, she finished for him, "...to Shady Vale!" She stared incredulously.

"Yes," he said—curtly, she thought.

"But..."

"Ten minutes." The door closed behind him.

Andrea gathered herself into a knot that was tied of confusion and despair.

What had happened? Why? What she could have done to deserve... She sought gingerly among fleeting nightmare memories, trying to find some reason why her father was taking her back to the Vale. Was it because she had cried? A boy wouldn't have cried. Was that it?

_It's not fair!_ she thought desperately, not after... She shuddered, and not completely from the cold. A few clear memories flashed: bottles of powder, the knife, and pain that her mind shrank from recalling, even as the echo of memory made her very bones ache for a moment. She had not gone through that for nothing.

Caught up her rebellious anguish, she let a full minute or more pass before the remembrance of her father's admonition prompted her to action. But since there was nothing else she could do for now, she started sorting through the clothing he had brought. There was a brown woolen skirt and a blouse that might fit well enough. Sitting up she could see her old clothes heaped on the floor, shoved partly under the bed. She leaned over and gingerly lifted a grimy article. Now that she had them off her back, it was no longer possible to ignore all the small rips and stains and dirt of three weeks alone in the wilderness, and then there was all the time after that... Grey memories, which turned elusively vague whenever she tried to look clearly at them, washed up over her again, making her head feel sick. Anyway, her old clothes looked more like a pile of rags, and she let them drop.

She had to rush to dress. As she tried hurriedly to turn the blouse right side out, all at once the pressure against the inside of her bare arm brought something else to mind, and she wrenched her hand out of the sleeve. For the first time, staring down, she noticed the thin pale lines, scarcely even visible, except as an odd glint that did funny things to her vision, running across each wrist. The memory of how they had gotten there was not shadowy, like so much of what had come after—that, at least, was etched indelibly in her brain.

Uncertainly, her eyes followed the beat of her pulse throbbing rapidly under the lines. She couldn't remember losing the bandages. In a panic, she sought for the image, as if it were somehow terribly important, troubled by the twisting of her guts and a pressure between her ears. Some other, deeper instinct told her she should not try to remember this right now, but she ignored it, trembling though she was. She had never _not_ been able to remember something: she _had_ to know, in spite of a queer inner pain as she forced her thoughts into places they did not want to go. Darkness, terrors, madness...no. Suddenly she was blinking at a dizzying ache behind her eyes. She couldn't think about it anymore; there were only a few thin details: horrible agony, then greyness, then coming here. So...maybe it was better not to remember, she thought sickly, letting her face sink against her clenched fists, tears springing up unexpectedly.

She had cried then, too; she remembered that, and so must her father. Raising her aching head again with an abrupt sniff, Andrea snatched at the clothes and began jerking them on, taking out her anger in rough movements. But it was too hard to get on the unfamiliar articles quickly that way, and she had to temper her frustration. Allanon had been wearing the same black robes as when she had met him, but the clothes he had brought for her were different from those typically worn in the Vale: the blouse fastened with many buttons set close together—too many, she thought, struggling to do them up—the cuffs were very narrow, and the skirt, when she stood on the stones of the floor—ice cold even through her stockings—fell almost to her ankles. She had rarely had on a real skirt since she was old enough to make her own clothing. And those were just hand-me-downs from Marek's girls. The split-skirt pants—worn mostly by traders' girls, who needed them for riding—had proved better suited to both her chores and her nature. The full swish of fabric gave her an unaccustomed sense of femininity, which she first reveled in, then rebelled at.

_I don't want to be a girl at all_, she thought crossly. There was a wooden comb in the bundle and she smoothed her tangled hair out as best as she could, wincing. She fingered the shoulder-length locks with a disgust that was not entirely on account of the oil and dirt. If she had scissors, then she could make herself _look_ more like a boy. Did she still have her folding knife? Hastily she dug into the pocket of her old pants—it was there, along with the packet of her mother's letters. She transferred these carefully to the depths of her new pocket, but stared at the knife for half a minute before putting it away as well. Even if the blade weren't next to useless for chopping hair off, without a looking glass she wouldn't dare trust the results. It wouldn't help just to look ugly. Anyway, her father's hair was not so very much shorter than her own; whether that was because he wore it that way or because it hadn't been cut in some time she did not know. Giving it up, she sat back down on the edge of the narrow bed and sulked.

Her father was taking her back to Shady Vale. And the only reason she could imagine for that was because she had not been brave enough somehow—not as brave as a boy would be. _I was as brave as I was able to be_, she protested. _I thought he was proud of me._ And what was wrong, really, with being a girl? _Oh, why wasn't I born a boy!_

Shady Vale. No. She shook her head. What would her fate there be now, having simply vanished earlier? Plenty of people she knew were good at filling in their own details, though she hesitated to even imagine what those might be in this instance. Her father couldn't, _couldn't_ mean to leave her there again. Anywhere, she groaned, _anywhere_ else in Four Lands, and she wouldn't complain! But what could she _do_ about it?

She stomped on her boots. They had been new this spring...no, last spring now, and although they were worn, they were still solid; the leather would hold up for a bit more walking. As she pulled on the second boot, wild ideas started darting through her head. Certainly he could leave her in Shady Vale, but would she stay there? He wasn't going to find her that easy to shake off, she told herself stubbornly; she would tag along at the edge of his shadow from one end of the Four Lands to the other if she had to. But unquestionably, the most practical thing was to try to convince him, somehow, not to leave her there in the first place. And how could she manage that?

_Absolutely no more crying_, she decided. _I will have to act like a boy, and prove that I can take anything—that I'm not just a stupid, scared girl_; she lent her own derision to the phrase. The main problem was to be convincing; if she was scared, even a little—and she had to admit she was still, a little—she was sure her father would know it. He knew things in the same wordless way she did. _I just can't let him see it_. Instinctively she strengthened the walls within that blocked out the hateful thoughts around her when they were too much to bear. She was not sure that it would keep him from reading her thoughts, and it was exhausting to maintain; also, she discovered, it made her head ache even worse. But if it _did_ work... They would have to stay that way, for a while anyway.

She thought ten minutes must have passed. In spite of the cold, she went to the window, lifting the cloak up around her shoulders, huddling into it as she leaned against the windowsill.

The forest stretched out to the north, the Streleheim Plains a lighter blur on the horizon. A hint of spring's paler green was scattered among the darker pines below. The castle stood high above the forest; that was how Paranor had been described in tales. Yet she had a fuzzy picture in her mind of how the Keep actually looked from the outside, standing atop high cliffs, an image too real in detail to have come from her imagination. There was a dizzy lurch as she almost remembered—but the only thing comforting in that memory was her father's presence. Instead she took a deep, chilly breath out of the breeze that wafted past the little window; it cleared her head, and eased the ache behind her eyes.

A hawk was circling in the pale blue morning sky, and she watched it dip and flutter. The only clouds visible were fleecy masses to the west, but the breeze from the mountains to the east, rugged and dark with shadows, smelled faintly of freshly melted snow. The whole expanse of the spring day laid out before her eyes lifted her heart suddenly, in spite of everything. Was it possible to think of anything terrible on such a day? But the folds of paper she fingered in her pocket were a tactile reminder that, unless she did something to prevent it, she was going to lose her father all over again.

Another sharp knock at the door cut off further reverie on the subject.

"Are you ready to go?" Allanon's voice came muffled again through the door.

"Yes."

He came in and shuttered the window; when he turned around again, he looked at her, and a faintly quizzical expression passed over his face, but Andrea was too intent on stifling her own thoughts to even dare to attempt to tell what he was thinking. She planted her feet and tried to appear as though she could cope with anything.

"Come along." He took her by the shoulder and led her out the door.

Bright lines of window slits at the far end lit the hallway dimly. They went down a flight of stairs and then another. They seemed to take turning after turning through the passageways, yet it was only a couple of minutes before they reached the kitchens.

A pleasant odor preceded their entry into one of the smaller of these, which was comparatively and comfortingly warm. A long trestle table with benches ran down the middle of the room. Andrea huddled as near to the stove as possible—for the first time this morning, she was not desperately cold, and she shivered again, trying to soak up the heat. At this end of the table sat a pitcher, a plate piled with fried cornmeal cakes, a jar of something honey-colored, two cups, and a spoon.

The pitcher turned out to contain water, and the jar, apple preserves. The corn cakes, though done on the outside, were slightly raw...no, wait: that was as done as they ever got, the reason she had never included them on her list of things she was willing to eat. The preserves were too cloyingly sweet to eat alone. There was nothing else.

Even the smell of the cooking had, strangely, only faintly pricked her appetite, and now, eating the heavy cornmeal with apple jelly—an odd combination at best—was driving it further away with every mouthful. But wary of her father's watchful eye on her as they ate, she forced herself to get down two of the things—with plenty of water—and hopefully, she thought, without making too many faces. Boys were always hungry. But maybe that wasn't something that mattered so much. Actually, she considered, wouldn't it be an added benefit of being a girl—that she would eat less?

"Done?"

"Mm-hm," she mumbled hollowly, through the last swallow in her cup. He hadn't eaten all that much himself. But he folded the extra cakes into a piece of cloth.

He filled her cup again as soon as she set it down. "Here." Andrea drank it up, though she was feeling waterlogged already. It was the only thing that tasted good.

"Let's go."

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**A/N:** This chapter feels a bit rough to me. The consequence, perhaps, of being one of those that has maintained its basic shape from the earliest versions, via revisions instead of a total rewrite. The "corn cakes" are what my dad called "fried cornmeal mush"—which is a much more accurate description. He loved them. I hated them. 


	9. Chapter 9

**Obligatory Disclaimer: **Not for profit. Just for fun. The characters and settings (except for Andrea) belong to Terry Brooks. I'm only playing with them—they'll be put back unharmed.

**A/N:** Thanks again to Shanna for her faithful reviewing! In this chapter, we get back to something of the Four Lands that we know, although I've added a lot of details. We only got the most tantalizing snippets of Allanon's POV in _Sword_. I've got to confess that this was one of my favorite chapters to write.

**

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Waking**

The passages in the sublevels of the Keep were murky without torchlight, though not pitch dark; the complex system that brought a trace of sunlight to the lower levels was still intact. There were patches of deeper blackness, however, where the reflectors had been knocked askew, and the accumulated dust of the centuries made the light less than it had been when the Druid Council had occupied these halls.

The lingering aura of disorder and decay brought a sense of distaste to Allanon. Only fragmentary memories remained of the old splendor, lost in his early childhood; and the years after the Second War of the Races, when the few remaining Druids had tried in vain to salvage something of their former life, were like a numb blur; but the sense of loss—of the culture and science that had once filled these halls, crushed in disaster and betrayal—was still pervasive.

Still, the garrison of Elves that had held the Keep in the three years prior to the previous summer had effected a number of minor repairs. He wondered why the garrison was not there now. He would have expected Eventine to restore the guard after recapturing the castle from the Gnomes—if the latter had dared to remain here after the destruction of their Master. But neither Elves nor Gnomes were in evidence. He was troubled by the possibilities that suggested, and considered briefly going directly to Arborlon. But Callahorn was closer; Balinor could doubtless tell him what he needed to know. Time enough to go to the Westland if it proved necessary. In any case, he had other, personal responsibilities to discharge, and for now, he determined, those would take precedence.

He tested Andrea's raised shields briefly again: they were still there, like a smoldering line of smoke, obscuring the thoughts behind. He could probably get through or around them easily enough, but annoyance, chiefly—aside from the lack of outright necessity—prevented him from the attempt. The downcycle of that intense elevation that came with waking was already hitting him, and the girl's sudden, perversely distrustful behavior was like a burr at the edge of his mind. Let her keep her thoughts to herself then, he decided.

They had come down to the level of the furnace-room catwalk. The foreboding memory of the last time he had come through this passage made him grimace inwardly as gripped the door handle; but the secret passage was still the easiest way in or out of the Keep these days.

Warmth flooded from the opened door, though not the scorching heat of the furnace when it was stoked high. The fires of the earth in the pit far below were at ebb. The cavernous room with its iron-bound walkway was empty.

The rubble of what had once been a stair leading more directly to the upper halls still lay scattered from the force of the Skullbearer's attack when it had ambushed the party from Culhaven. Picking a path around the loose stones, dangerously shadowed in the dull, far-below glow, Allanon reflected on the fate of that company. In spite of the near disaster at the Keep, they had all left here alive; where were they now? The indistinct visions he saw at times in the Druid Sleep had been briefer and vaguer even than usual, and—a small, cold tingle crossed his thoughts—he preferred not to remember all of them. But though the fate of the company had been among the things weighing heavily on his mind, there had been only flashes, devoid of detail. Shea and Flick, he felt little doubt, had gotten back to Shady Vale, but what of the others? Prince Balinor, Eventine's cousins Durin and Dayel, and the Dwarf Hendel had gone to Callahorn to warn of the approaching Northland army, and the Prince of Leah had followed soon after. They would all have been in the middle of the battle that ensued, and the Elven army had arrived later than the Druid would have liked. With the destruction of the Warlock Lord, he had been confident of the victory of the Elven forces. With luck, that victory had included the survival of those young people whom he had brought in search of the Sword of Shannara.

The heavy door at the far end of the catwalk swung back easily; beyond, stairs led down endlessly into the darkness. If he had been alone, he would have avoided kindling a light even now, trusting habit and lesser magic to guide his feet. But the steps were narrow, and the girl did not have the Sight. He took a torch from the wall bracket and lit it.

When he proffered a steadying hand, Andrea took it gingerly—was she afraid of him then? And was there any wonder in that? he thought grimly. But...no, not exactly afraid...the bond between them was still there, and it let him sense that much; as they descended, she clung to his hand more tightly. Even with the physical contact, she was managing to maintain most of her shielding—no mean feat, and it left him wondering again how she had learned to do such things—and the only thing on the surface was a hint of desperation and determination, and the projection of a single thought: _she wanted to stay with him_. But he _had_ brought her. Which made her present behavior perplexing and slightly aggravating. It was a riddle he did not have the patience to sort through at the moment; the edges of his mind were buzzing with the aftereffects of the high produced by that preternatural sleep, and he had other things to worry about. Getting to Callahorn safely without knowing the state of affairs in the Four Lands would require enough of his concentration.

Finally they reached the bottom of the long stair. Replacing the almost exhausted stub of the torch in the rack there, he released his daughter's hand and moved forward across the entryway to the rock face, placing sure fingers on the hidden mechanism that opened the great stone door, invisible from the outside.

Unfiltered sunlight streamed into the doorway. The hedge of briars that had surrounded the base of the cliffs was gone. Cautiously, he slipped outside, just within the shadow of the door. The ground was darkened all along the cliff wall, as far as could be seen in either direction, and a space had been cleared between it and the forest.

"Stay there," he ordered quietly, taking a few more tense paces into the light. There was no visible danger, nor indeed any sense of danger; but the removal of the thorns would make them an easy target if anyone were watching from the forest.

"What is it?" Andrea whispered, peering from the doorway.

He surveyed the edge of the forest again, then bent to inspect the blackened ground. "There was a hedge here, rohdisthorn—poisonous, as part of the defenses of the castle. The forest has been cut back, and the briars burned." He fingered the damp ash. "Before winter, I would say. You can come out." As his daughter stepped haltingly across the sooty earth, he stood up and looked first at the dark cliff wall behind them, then into the forest again. "What I wonder is this: was it done by the Gnomes in their retreat, or by Eventine in retaking the Keep, or perhaps after?"

"Why would they burn it?" she wondered.

"The Gnomes might as an act of destruction. But there was nothing inside the Keep to indicate that. More likely it was the Elven army, to make it easier to get at the castle, perhaps even to frighten the Gnomes into surrender. The Prince of Callahorn will know what happened."

"Is that why we're going to Callahorn?"

"In part, yes. And we need to get started." He glanced at where the sun stood, a good third of the way to the zenith. "Come along." After closing the stone door, leaving the entrance to the secret passage once more invisible from the outside, they started into the forest.

The forest of Paranor was bright with springtime, belying, in this season, its report as a dangerous, impregnable wood. The sunlight through the sparse new leaves was warm, though under the patches of heavier fir, the winter cold lingered. Blue and white and yellow flowers had sprung up wherever the sun had touched long enough to waken them. Allanon kept them on a rough track, visible not so much as a path, but as a string of wider areas among the trees, hidden by the twists in the undergrowth.

However it might appear now, the forest had not come idly by its reputation, and the Druid kept alert for wolves as they went along. This soon after winter, still hungry and with pups to protect, the individual animals would be doubly dangerous, though there was less chance of meeting them in a pack. Yet there was no sign of any all morning, which puzzled him as much as the burned thorn barrier. The Keep's defenses, which had safeguarded Paranor from any who did not have business there, through all the long years after the Second Race War, while its remaining owners left it half-abandoned, had apparently vanished. It seemed an omen somehow, yet he did not know how to read it: did it signify that the Keep no longer needed such rigorous protection in a new age without the shadow of the Warlock Lord, or did it mean that its time—the time of the Druids—was at an end? Apart from the absence of the wolves, the forest was astir with spring life: birds, squirrels, and other assorted small animals that skittered away or paused in curiosity at their passing.

They walked on past midday without stopping, and they walked in silence. Allanon had to adjust his accustomed pace for his young companion several times, when he noticed that she was having difficulty keeping up, though she had not complained in any way.

When they finally paused for a rest, in a clearing where it was possible to see a clear view of the Druids' Keep behind them, Andrea's eyes widened, gazing up, and she whispered an exclamation of awe. The wonder in her made him take a second look; the castle was such a regular feature in his mental geography, it was strange to think his daughter had never seen it before with her natural eyes.

The Keep loomed above the forest on its dark plateau—the Cliffs of Paranor. The castle itself was a warm grey bulk in the bright sun. Its towers and parapets rose against the pale blue sky, and sunlight glinted off windows high in the walls like gems. If it lacked anything toward being an altogether graceful edifice, there was yet something about its solidity that reflected the character and purposes of the men who had dwelt there, an appeal that always spoke to Allanon as a place, not merely of security, but of discovery.

"What do you know of the history of Paranor?" he asked.

In this way their talking began. He found the girl to be an attentive listener with astute questions; she had taken as history the fireside tales that most of the Valemen believed were nothing more than tales, and now soaked up his words like ground thirsty for rain after drought, hoarding details like bits of treasure. So he told her of the exile of her ancestors from the Kingdom of Beryllia, far to the northwest, and the building of the Keep, and of Galaphile and the founding of the Druid Council. The afternoon slipped away. All the while they talked, they walked southward toward the Dragon's Teeth, the mountains that formed a narrow—but because of their steepness, nearly impassable—barrier between Paranor and the Kingdom of Callahorn. Their conversation was disrupted only once, when the Druid discovered the reason for the absence of the marauding wolves.

"Be careful where you step," he cautioned.

A trap with the remains of a wolf carcass lay in the deep leaf mould a little distance to the side of their path. Considering the trepidation most common people felt about Paranor, he decided that this, too, was probably the work of the trappers of the Elven army. Yet no good trapper would leave an animal like this, unless something had prevented his return. Again, more questions were raised than answered by the discovery. But they found no more traps, and by sundown they had broken out of the forest, crossed the grassy space beyond, and climbed up onto the benches of the mountains.

Allanon stopped at the base of the trail to the Kennon Pass and watched the sun sink below the level of the low spur of mountains to the west. He felt pressed for time. The sooner he found out what was happening at present in the Four Lands, the better he would feel. Traveling constantly would bring them to Tyrsis by tomorrow afternoon, but that was traveling all night without rest. Of his own endurance, he was not in doubt—he had hoped the need was done for such efforts, but at least he was accustomed to it—but Andrea, while she would have the endurance, probably should not press things so far at this point. On the other hand, would she be able to sleep tonight in any event? And they had precious little food, though they could do without it for time—again, inadvisable. He weighed the choices; he would prefer to deal with these problems in Callahorn than here. The air was already getting cold, and walking would keep off the chill better than resting without a fire.

He looked down at his daughter. "Do you think you could keep going?"

Andrea stared down at the toes of her boots for a moment before quietly nodding. "I really don't feel very tired," she stated. This was not simple forced bravery, he knew: what she had said was true, and around the edges of her wavering shields, he could sense she was troubled by the fact.

What could he tell her? To coddle her at this point was only a brief temptation. The girl was being determinedly brave—an attitude that had not been lost on him, since she had been projecting it most of the day—and that determination could be enough to carry her through, better than anything he might say. The best he could do now was to get them to Callahorn as quickly as possible.

"Remind me when you need to rest," he said.

"I will."

They stopped at a spring for a drink of icy water and what, of necessity, passed for their supper. Andrea only nibbled halfheartedly at the cold corncake saved from breakfast. "I'm not very hungry," she murmured in answer to the offer of a second. The far-away sound in her voice troubled him this time, raising suspicions he was hesitant to accept. Still, he said nothing. Presently they started into the mountains.

The sky was clear; it was a cold night for walking. The stars shone bright and frosty in a wide sweep overhead, and after a while the waning moon rose. Allanon spent some time calculating from the moon and the positions of the stars, to make a better estimate of the date. The last of March, he decided. That had been cutting their time in limbo as short as he dared.

As much to distract both of them from brooding on their individual worries as anything else, he began pointing out the stars, naming them, repeating aloud his calculations. But he sensed that her knowledge-hunger had dulled almost as much as her stomach's hunger, and though she tried to pay attention, the eagerness was gone. Finally they walked on in silence. At times he slowed the pace cautiously, as potential points of guard or ambush were approached, but they never met anyone. It was midmorning before they saw any of the Lands' inhabitants, coming to a ferry crossing at the Mermidon, Callahorn's wide winding river.

They had come down out of the mountains at dawn—resting only briefly in the pass—and walked out into the wide meadows; the sun had risen over the Runne Mountains to the east, touching the sweeping plains of Callahorn with purple and green and gold, and bringing a hint of color to Andrea's ashen cheeks. He had pointed out to her the direction of Varfleet in the Runne Mountains and the peaks of the small range of hills at the head of which Tyrsis stood to the south. That had been in the early morning, when the distance and haziness that had been growing over the girl's thoughts all night lifted for a while. Exhaustion from keeping her shields up so long, he told himself, unconvinced at the assertion. He was encouraged when she seemed completely awake as they crossed the river, but as they began walking again, she fell once more into her waking dream. With his lips set in a thin line, he pushed on, and shortly they were traveling along the well-worn road running from Tyrsis to Varfleet.

From the idle, overheard talk of the travelers on the ferry and the farmers and traders on the road, life had returned to normal for the folk of the Borderlands. If anything, there was a tone of greater hope as they looked forward to an early summer. One piece of significant news came to the Druid's ears: Prince Balinor was now the King of Callahorn. That brought a faint touch of sadness to him; Ruhl Buckhannah was not as forward-looking a man as his son, but he had been a good king. Balinor had always been well-loved by his people, however, and that had not changed. Allanon had never doubted the man's ability to rule well—it seemed to come naturally to him.

There had been nothing spoken about Balinor's misguided younger brother, usually a popular figure of gossip. While the Druid's connections with the royal family of Callahorn had never been as strong as those with the Elves, still, they were friends and allies. He had watched the two princes grow up over the years, and Balinor's conflicts with Palance troubled him on a personal level as well as a political one.

There was also no mention of Palance's advisor, Stenmin. Whether that boded good or ill was uncertain. The man's influence on the younger prince had been of bad effect, but taken elsewhere, it might be worse.

At the city gates, Allanon took advantage of the opportunity to catch one of the coaches that sat for hire there, which took them as far as the palace itself. He had begun conversing absently with his daughter again, if only for the sake of forcing Andrea to focus enough to answer. This seemed to help, but the wide-open alertness of her eyes, as if it hurt her to be awake—in ways that had nothing to do with lacking a night's sleep—was painful to watch for very long; he did not want her to walk farther now than absolutely necessary. Balinor would offer food and rest, and what safety might be found in the home of the Buckhannah's.

The guards at the palace door recognized the tall figure, if not his young and peaked-looking charge. They were admitted immediately, and a young soldier with a leopard badge on his tunic went with them as if to show the way, though clearly he knew that the Druid had been here many times before. At last the fellow remarked that the king was in his study and retreated awkwardly.

Andrea, while still pale, looked almost normally awake—perhaps the coach ride had helped—so he put aside his worries about her for a moment. That could be taken care of soon enough.

At the entrance to the study, Allanon paused before knocking softly, then opened the door himself. It had been several years since he had been welcomed here as a family friend instead of a messenger of bad tidings, and to knock on Balinor's door and wait for it to be opened was a habit unused.

Whether Balinor had been busy with something important over his desk was difficult to tell. Immediately upon the opening of the door, he looked up, then quickly pushed back his chair.

"Allanon!" There was genuine delight in the man's voice, even though his expression was clearly one of surprise.

The Prince of Callahorn had changed little in the past year, though the long scar across the man's cheek had faded slightly. If the horrors of the northern war had added grey hairs, they were not visible in the light hair or beard. The weight of kingship, however, seemed to have fallen across his shoulders; at that moment he wore it with the uncomfortable grace of a man laboring hard at a task.

"It's good to see you again, Balinor." Allanon strode across the room, meeting him with a handshake as firm as a warm embrace.

Balinor returned the greeting, still rather astounded. "Shea said...something...after you disappeared last summer, but I didn't..." The girl standing behind the Druid proved to be a momentary distraction. The king pulled his attention back. "I didn't know if I'd see you again."

"I had some business of my own to take care of." Allanon had followed Balinor's querulous gaze. "Andrea, this is Balinor Buckhannah, the King of Callahorn. Balinor, this is my daughter, Andrea." He noted then how much paler she had gone—a numb "yes" was all she managed to the other's "pleased to meet you." She wasn't going to hold up much longer, in spite of her increasingly forced projections of steadiness—which she was using, he suddenly realized, as much to convince herself as him.

Balinor turned his attention back to the Druid. "How long can you stay?"

"Not long, now. Only long enough to hear your news."

Balinor went back to the desk and whatever was worrying him there. "Where should I start? Perhaps you have news for me. Where have you been, Allanon?"

* * *

**A/N:** I've been in love with the Four Lands for such a long time, some of my mental images of it are actually photographic, rather than being like paintings, as most of my mental images of fantasy worlds are. The geography of this chapter is by far the most photographic of any part of the Four Lands to me. I hope that shows somewhat in the descriptions. 

Next chapter: back to Andrea's POV. The sooner people review and remind me that I'm posting this, the sooner I post another chapter.


	10. Chapter 10

**Obligatory Disclaimer: **This is for fun. No harm intended.

**A/N: **Thanks to Shanna, my faithful reviewer! Remember, the sooner I get a review on one chapter, the sooner I post the next. Because I tend to forget that I'm posting this in the meanwhile!

**

* * *

Palace**

_You don't want to know_, Andrea thought dimly. _You don't want to know_. She put a hand out to find something to lean on to keep her balance, but there was nothing there. _Not falling again..._

Andrea opened her eyes without knowing she had closed them, and found herself staring at a ceiling such as she had never seen before, made up of small, diamond-shaped panels. She couldn't focus properly; she could feel her mind struggling to make one image out of the two that floated independently, as she seemed to float.

But she wasn't falling anymore, she was lying on something soft. She could feel the smoothness of cloth under her fingertips. Here was her father, sitting by her, and at last her eyes found something they could focus on.

From elsewhere in the room, she heard a voice, a voice she had been trying to listen to a moment ago, asking what was the matter. The king of Callahorn—they'd been standing in his study, and..._did I faint?_ she thought. Somehow she'd always had the notion that fainting was...well...more dramatic. Not just a matter of suddenly finding a blank spot in your memory of the last few minutes. Not that her remembrance of the past little while was very clear to begin with. The memories of the morning, _yesterday morning_, at Paranor were sharp—almost too sharp—but they faded into a dull blur of endless, endless walking...grasses waving and nodding endlessly before her eyes. Yet there had been night somewhere, clear and bright and cold enough to seem real in the middle of all this haze. And the coach and the city and the palace and the guards were squintingly bright-edged outlines. She knew she had not eaten for some time, yet there was no hunger in the dreadful emptiness in her stomach, and though she had not slept, there was no sleepiness in the exhaustion that ached through her limbs. _What is wrong with me?_

Allanon spoke, but he was answering the king. "We've traveled more quickly than my daughteris accustomed to. I didn't realize how exhausted she was. She hadn't complained of the pace." He caught her eye then, with a glint that made her wonder if she had been found out altogether. "She only needs rest."

_That's not the answer to my question_, she thought.Another memory with her father's voice whispered: dangers, madness..._death?_ She felt so...blank, with this haze closing over her thoughts—was that how it started? Was that how it felt to go mad? And as if that weren't bad enough, she began remembering now how grey everything had looked through that haze all day, and it suddenly occurred to her just _how_ grey it was. Panic tightened in her and her hand found her father's, which she gripped convulsively.

He leaned over and smoothed the hair off her forehead, and with it some of the ache that had been growing across her brows. His dark gaze fairly demanded that she focus her own there, and as she did she felt calmer. Turning his head slightly, though his eyes did not leave her, he said, "Balinor, could you obtain me a cup of water?" _But I'm not even thirsty anymore_, Andrea thought. Then his eyes said he needed to look away, and to let go of her hand, but as he did his voice was there instead. "Are you queasy? Sick to your stomach?"

It took her a moment to decide it was too great an effort to talk. She shook her head, and immediately wished she hadn't. Dizziness crashed over her again, a cycle of tilting and tilting that never quite let her really fall. She blinked rapidly, trying to regain a sense of balance. Finally the spinning slowed...slowed...and stopped. And her eyes stopped on the packet of folded papers that her father was opening. Like Granny's medicine powders. _Other_ powders? But no, those had been in bottles. She didn't want to think about that again. It seemed as if it would be so easy to slip into that greyness again, to disappear altogether; the panic returned and with it her voice.

"What's wrong with me? Everything's spinning. But I'm not tired and I should be because we didn't rest and it's all so far away and..." She pressed her eyes closed; she found she was not able to control her tongue, and she could hear her voice rising on a note of desperation.

"Shhh. Look at me." She found steadiness again. Yet he was concerned; it didn't take Sensing to read that in his expression.

There was a click as the door opened again, and in half a moment the king set a tray with a pitcher of water and several glass tumblers on a stand beside the bed. Her eyes darted that way for an instant, focusing as they hadn't been able to do back there in the study on a tawny beard, the purple line of a long scar on one cheek, and hazel eyes that studied her curiously. Vaguely alarmed, she shifted her attention back to her father.

Allanon poured one of the glasses half-full and emptied a pale dust from one the waxed papers into it, dropping the scrap on the tray. Andrea knew some of the apothecary marks for the medicines Granny used, but—more aggravating that it ought to be—the rip had obscured the symbol; what remained did not seem familiar in any case, and her eyes went instead to the glass. Her father swished the water around and around until the powder dissolved, a motion that made her head sick.

"Sit up," he ordered quietly. She hadn't any choice, with his arm's insistent strength behind her shoulders. The panic was loose again--it was going to happen all over again, she was going to be drawn down into nothingness. It would be so easy...

Yet as he put the glass to her lips and the first acrid drops rolled sharply across her tongue—though the bitterness perhaps came partly from a sudden misgiving—she discovered unexpectedly that she still had the will for self-preservation. She put up her hand and pushed the glass away. "What is it?" She heard the fear and obstinacy in her voice, as if it were someone else's; too late she remembered the other's presence in the room.

"It will help you rest." There was no answer in his eyes, and he held the glass up inexorably. She knew she was going to drink it. She dared not cause any more shame, struggling like an unmanageable child, not in front of this king who was also her father's friend, not even if it were poison. She gulped horrible swallows, shaking with sobs that fought to come out past the liquid. Yet somehow as she drank, she was drinking trust with it, too, so that at the last bitter mouthful, when she was allowed to fall back against the pillow, there was no betraying sound choking from her throat.

Still..._something worse is going to happen_. She closed her eyes, but there was no greyness, no spinning, no pain, just a warming, spreading sleepiness that flowed outward through her limbs. She tried to tense herself against it..._something worse is going to happen_... —_No, it may not seem so, but rest will help_.— Her efforts settled out like sand underwater.

She forced her eyes open, discovering that this was difficult to do. Everything was blurred—not the hazy blur that made everything grey, but a watery blur that softened the lines in her father's face, and made everything beyond that a fuzzy white. Whether she would sleep the sleep of death or not—and she suddenly dared think that perhaps she would not—she allowed her eyelids to close again. With another breath, yielding altogether, she sank into darkness.

* * *

When Andrea awoke, with the swiftness that comes of not dreaming, the room seemed darker than she remembered; yet, the square of sky framed in the window was bright daytime blue. It had been afternoon before, hadn't it? She could remember everything now, in spite of a few fuzzy spots: particularly that grey dream she couldn't—didn't want—to think about. _That's over. _But apparently, waking up not knowing the time or how long she had been asleep wasn't over quite yet. 

She sat up, shrugging at the stiffness of her slept-in clothing, and looked around. The molded designs on the ceiling were the same ones she had seen when the world was still spinning overhead. She was a little hesitant, as she pushed herself upright, that things might start swaying again, but they didn't. She hadn't noticed before how truly fine a room she had been brought to. All the fabrics, on the chairs, the drapes at the window, and the coverlet she had been lying on, were a silvery-blue damask. The delicate gilt-trimmed furniture made the fine red leather chairs in the mansion at Leah look dowdy by comparison.

Yet before she really saw any of these things, her gaze lighted on her father, clad now in a grey robe, leaning back in one of the elaborate armchairs with his eyes shut.

A rush of emotion, that seemed to fill all the space between her earlier wakening and this one, came suddenly back to her: the desperation of being abandoned again, the determination of trying to prevent that, the fear of what was happening as everything around her had gone dull and grey.

On impulse she looked to the stand beside the bed. The tray was still there, and half-guiltily—_I have a right to know_—she snatched up the scrap of paper and pressed the torn edges together flat. The mark was hand-scribed instead of stamped, and there were a few variations from the ordinary rune—but basically it was poppies. Poppies for sleep; she ought to have guessed that. She flushed suddenly, and put the paper carefully back on the tray. She drew up her knees under the soft, knitted blanket someone had spread over her, and leaned on them with a sigh.

She hadn't yet made so loud a sound as this, hadn't meant to now really, and she looked up as her father's eyes opened, without the lids even fluttering, as if he hadn't actually been dozing after all.

"Are you feeling better?" His voice was quiet, but oddly strained.

"Yes," she answered truthfully after a moment. She felt alarmingly normal after all that had happened.

"You've almost slept the sun around—it isn't quite noon. I was becoming concerned."

"What...happened...to me?" she asked hesitantly; but she looked her father in the eye, as if he might still prevaricate if she didn't.

The dark eyes were surprisingly hard. _Why?_ In that strange, wordless way of understanding that was so instinctive, their thoughts met in a clash, and she saw her recent mistrust and suspicion as he must. _But I didn't know! I still don't!_ Her own temper flared in defense. From the very first she had trusted, had _wanted_ to trust him, with no more reason than that her instincts had been right, than that he was her father, than her mother's belief. Yet from the moment that trust had been given, her existence had been turned upside down and threaded through with fearful things, and with no more explanation from him than she could give for why she trusted him to begin with. Why should it bother him that she would be apprehensive about anything! A line of blame pulled between them like an invisible tug-of-war.

Impossibly...it held steady. The weight and measure of it balanced, until anger frayed back into acceptance, and resentment into forgiveness. When Allanon spoke again, it was in a gentler voice.

"Do you remember how you felt when you first woke at the Keep?"

Andrea nodded. That incredible surge of absolute wakefulness, of being thoroughly _alive_, was not something she would easily forget. Just thinking about it stirred a faint echo of the feeling.

He must have recognized something in her expression. "You pay for things like that, Andrea. I didn't stop to think what other effects the backlash might have on you, being as accustomed to all this as I am myself. Coming out of the Druid Sleep is not always as...easy as it seems. The mind has a kind of inertia, a tendency to follow familiar paths. And when you were faced with too many things that seemed unfamiliar, you started to sink into that pattern. Don't let it frighten you too much, " he said, answering the fear that rose in her again. "The disorientation sickness can't draw you back physically."

"But it could drive me mad?"

She knew he did not want to answer that. Finally he said, "That will not happen."

"Or rather," he added, "it will not happen unless you permit it to happen. It only requires strength of mind and the determination to resist it, and you have both in plenty." The corners of his mouth bent into a grim smile for an instant. But Andrea was too concerned with her own questions to let herself be deflected from getting them all answered.

"Was that what made me not sleepy or hungry, then?" she reasoned.

Allanon shook his head. "I'm afraid that will be more or less normal for you from now on. Your endurance—for hunger, pain or exhaustion—is now greater than before. But it isn't a free gift. The Druid Sleep allots a certain amount of time, before it requires replenishing. And the farther you press yourself beyond normal human limits, the faster that time is used up. Unfortunately, those limits are not always as clearly defined for you now, and you will find yourself having to eat at times when you are not hungry, and to sleep when you are not tired. That, I'm afraid, is part of the discipline. Though it's not always as bad as now, immediately afterward," he added, as she breathed a resigned sigh. She had signed on for whatever it meant, she reminded herself, and was not very comforted. Then she remembered something else.

"Can I ask one more question?"

"Perhaps."

Aggravated but undaunted, she said plaintively, "Why are you taking me back to Shady Vale?"

His eyes flashed, and again she couldn't read the thoughts and feelings behind them. But it occurred to her that the thread between them was still there, and she followed it back. What she got was slight, but_...amusement?_ She felt more aggravated than before. She frowned and raised her own mental walls, with an attitude that approximated: _so there! _And was rewarded with a momentary look of incredulity.

"So," her father said slowly. "_That's_ what this is all about."

He _had_ realized what she was doing. Andrea wasn't sure how that affected her chances of changing his mind, but she didn't like it.

"Well?" she said, impatiently.

Her father raised one hand to his beard, which she now realized had been neatly trimmed.

"I think," he said, "that you have jumped to a hasty conclusion without adequate information. A very bad habit I suspect you have."

Andrea grimaced, chagrined at his assessment: far too much like what Granny Melaton said of her.

"Probably the quickest way to break you of it is to let you to deal with the consequences for yourself. Therefore," a hint of the former smile returned, "I believe I'm not going to answer your question."

She recognized a brick wall when she saw one. Granny, and even Uncle Curzad, had a few of those, and she had learned long ago that there were times when it was pointless to beat yourself against them and useless to try to find a way around them. And this was one of those times.

Her father unfolded his tall frame from the chair. "Now that you are awake, you will have something in the way of breakfast, which you will eat whether you are hungry or not..."

"I think maybe I am."

"Good. And then I expect you will have the chance to get cleaned up."

"Good."

"Stay here and I'll see about it." Grey robes swung about, and the door closed behind him.

* * *

It was less than five minutes before she was descended upon. 

"Don't you look a sight! But we'll have you right as rain in no time." A portly woman with greying hair tied back under a linen kerchief came in with another tray. She set it near the window. "There you are—a bite to eat."

Andrea bounced up from the bed, laying the afghan aside, and trying to smooth out the Andrea-shaped wrinkles where she had slept, abashedly conscious of the dirt that wouldn't wipe off the damask coverlet where her feet, boots and all, had rested. She wished fervently for a mirror, to see just how much of a sight she was.

"I'm going to get your bath ready," said the woman, patting the girl on the arm as she settled her at the small table, and disappeared as rapidly as she had come.

Andrea stared out the window; the panes were small and diamond-shaped, and she couldn't figure out how to open it, or even if it opened. Below were hedged gardens, still branchy from winter, but filling in with clouds of yellow and pink blossoms. The paths wandered in out of the sunlight, but here where she sat above it was still shadowed and she couldn't see the sun yet, though it was clearly somewhere behind her. This window must face west, she decided, settling her sense of direction back into place, which made her feel better than she would have imagined, for such a small thing.

The fluffy white biscuits must have been leftover from breakfast, since they had long since cooled. But they tasted delicious. Andrea realized how long it had been since she actually had real food, not just something put together to keep her going, and attacked the meal with a gusto that surprised herself. She was trying to decide whether she could manage biting into a pear—the last thing that remained on the tray--when the woman returned.

"When you're finished, I'll take you to bathe."

"I'm done." The pear went back to the dish.

"I think my Amerie has something that should fit you for now," the other said, as she led the Druid girl down the hall. "Here we are."

She opened the door on a room where lamps appeared, at first, to float on trailers of steam. The light glinted off the large brass tub and shimmered on the surface of its contents.

"Now, if you'd prefer to manage for yourself, I can take your things to be washed." She pointed to a cake of soap and a coarse mitt on a stand near the basin.

"Yes, I would. Thank you." Quickly shedding her dirty clothes, Andrea slipped into the water, and sighed.

"Are you sure you'll be alright?" The woman wavered for a moment. "They say you passed clean out yesterday."

How far had _that_ gone? "I'm fine," Andrea said firmly. Her eyes met the other's grey ones; the woman's face fell in pleasant, motherly lines. She was only trying to be kind.

After a pause, there was a faint sigh and a shake of the head. "Yes, of course." The woman took the clothes and went.

Andrea scrubbed until her skin tingled, then held her breath while she ducked her head underwater and washed her hair. Then for while she sat in the warm water, soaking up the heat and reveling in being clean. She was relieved that the scar lines seemed almost to have vanished, in this light anyway; only by force of will could she see a faint white shimmery thread, and she didn't care to repeat the buzzing feeling in her head that doing so engendered.

The door opened a crack. It wasn't the woman again, but a girl somewhere near her own age, though similarly kerchiefed. She slipped in and greeted Andrea with a friendly smile that the Druid girl couldn't help answering in kind, despite her surprise.

"I'm Amerie," the girl said. When she was grown, with children of her own, she would probably look very much like the older woman; once, the girl's mother must have been a fine, buxom lass like this. She laid an armful of clothes over the back of a chair. "Do you need the towel?"

"Yes, thanks." Shivering, she stepped out of the dirty water, and wrapped the cloth around herself. "My name's Andrea." It was the first time she had said that out loud for a very long time, and she was pleased with the way it sounded.

"Yes, I know." Amerie handed her some underthings and finally a pale blue sack-like dress that probably looked pretty against the servant girl's rosy complexion, but as Andrea looked in the tall standing mirror, she saw it only made her look washed out. Still, everything fit better than she expected. Amerie rummaged for a comb, and pulled the chair in front of the mirror. "Sit down."

A little overwhelmed at the other's girl confidence, Andrea sat and let her hair be combed. Amerie was more careful with the tangles than Andrea would have been herself, but the shell comb was thick with dark strands by the time the smooth, damp mass of hair hung neatly against her neck.

The face that met her in the glass was not much different than it had been at the inn in Varfleet... three weeks and a long time ago. The eyes were still a muddy green, the eyebrows too dark and thick for beauty when she pushed her overgrown bangs aside. The only thing pretty about her was the heart shape of her face, but the set of her jaw was a little too firm, and spoiled the effect. At least her teeth, she thought gratefully, once salt was found for her to scrub them with, were white and straight.

Amerie's mother had come in during the combing with an armload of dark cloth. "Oh good, Amerie, you're tending to her." She dropped her bundle beside the one small window opposite the door, and settled herself on the seat there. "This hem's gone all to pieces."

Andrea's glances in the direction soon discovered that the hem in question was at the bottom of a black cloak that couldn't be anyone's but her father's. As soon as she was finished with her grooming, she stated boldly, "I can do that."

The woman looked at her. "This would go faster with another pair of hands," she admitted, uncertainly. "Here. Can you make a patch that won't show?" She handed the Druid girl another black pile of fabric, a box of scraps and a needle.

"Mending's how I earn my pocket money," Andrea said, without thinking, and then remembered: that had been in a different life. Her easy grin faded as the older woman looked at her carefully, and she dropped her eyes to her task. There were rips in the dark robe that she didn't like the look of. Grimacing, she threaded the needle and went to work.

There was a knock at the door. "Come?"

"Come in, Barrith," Amerie's mother called.

A short but burly fellow, who was evidently another servant, came in and immediately started emptying the tub, carrying out buckets of water until the large basin was empty; then he proceeded to clean and polish it.

"So," he remarked to Amerie's mother. "Where do you suppose the girl came from?"

Andrea, deep in concentration on her tiny stitches, took a moment to realize that it was she who was being spoken of.

"You have the manners of a codfish, man," said Amerie's mother.

"I was only curious," he put in.

"And only as much sense, to go talking about his daughter as if she wasn't sitting right here."

It occurred to Andrea then that she was half-hidden by the large mirror. And wearing Amerie's dress besides. She leaned forward and looked at Barrith squarely.

A couple of kerflummoxed sounds came from the man's throat. "I beg your pardon, I'm sure." He bowed loosely.

Andrea couldn't help hearing the slight emphasis: _his_ daughter. She didn't know quite what to make of that. For a few minutes she had felt in good company, and now she felt like some strange animal that had been caught and was being gawked at. Sensing that the fellow was more flustered than repentant, she glared at him. Barrith stared back for an instant, then broke away.

"I, uh, take your point, Melline," he said to Amerie's mother. Muttering "Shades," he gathered up the cloths he'd used for polishing, and made a hasty retreat.

"You go too, Amerie," said Melline. "You're not accomplishing anything useful here."

"But Mother..."

"You have work of your own still to do, I'll warrant. Off with you."

"'Bye," Amerie grinned.

Andrea felt bereft of a sudden friend after the other girl left, and kept expecting the older woman to say something further. But she didn't, and the two sat in silence for a long time, broken only by the swish of thread through fabric and the click of shears.

"Here you are." The door had opened quietly, and Andrea looked up, surprised again. It was Allanon.

"I didn't know she was needed elsewhere, or I'd have sent her." Melline stood up. "Go on, girl, I'll finish this myself."

* * *

Andrea didn't ask where they were going. She would rather have sat and gone on sewing—the even rhythm of her stitches was a soothing way to pass time—but she wasn't about to complain. The fact that her father had refused earlier to say why he was taking her back to the Vale was dismal, but she could not help feeling remotely encouraged. If he hadn't made up his mind, there was still a chance. 

Their destination at the moment, however, seemed to be the gardens. A narrow gate in a wall led to steps which descended onto a wide expanse of lawn. The broad hollow ran between the palace and the city proper, and a narrow stream pushed against green banks down the center toward the other end of the park, where a few people walked or sat under the trees. A wide bridge spanned the whole of the shallow valley, from the city to the palace, in a graceful arc. Under the near end of the bridge, but still some distance out from the palace wall, stood a small stone building.

"There you are," the king of Callahorn said. He had been pacing in front of the building, but turned now with a wave. As they came up, he stood with an air of expectation, looking from the building to Allanon and back again.

_Herein lies the heart and soul of the nations_, Andrea silently read the inscription on a marble tablet imbedded in the wall. _Their right to be free men/ Their desire to live in peace/ Their courage to seek out truth./ Herein lies the Sword of Shannara._

"Very good," her father murmured. "You did well, Balinor."

"Shea insisted. And as you weren't here to advise..." the king trailed off. "I know the Sword was at Paranor all these years."

"Shea had the right to dispose of the Sword where he chose. No one else could have a better right, not even I. And no other people have suffered as much in this as yours. It was well done."

Andrea thought of Shea, almost for the first time since she had woken; the legendary Sword had lain on the ground beside him there in the Northland. This monument made all that seem so far away and long ago. Maybe for King Balinor it did seem long ago. Maybe that was what this monument was supposed to do: make all the horrible things everyone had been through seem part of some glorious past. She frowned slightly, puzzled by her own reasoning. But that wasn't what monuments were for at all: they were to help _keep_ things in remembrance. Yet the Druid girl couldn't help wondering if it would ever seem a long time ago to the Valeman—it didn't to her. At least the Sword's presence here meant Shea had got back home. _But there's nothing here about Shea_, she thought with a vague indignation, _and it was he who defeated the Warlock Lord. _

"Inside the vault, the Sword is sunk in a stone block, as it was before at Paranor." The king smiled an easy smile. "Here it rests til the end of time," he gestured, then cast a sidelong glance at the Druid. "I hope."

Allanon chuckled faintly and clapped Balinor on the arm. "So do I, my friend, so do I."

As they turned away, however, the Druid paused and looked back. "There's a thought with merit." He went to the plaque, and placing the fingers of both hands against it, bowed his head slightly; a faint blue glow radiated outward through the stones of the wall. Andrea felt her eardrums pop with a snap she had felt rather than heard with her ears. Magic, she thought, and felt a grin flash across her face; she tried to stifle it, abashed. Was it that she was finally seeing the sort of magic she had heard of so often in tales, a more visible sort than any of the little things she did herself? Or was it pride in her father's ability to wield it?

"That will protect the vault a little longer perhaps. And as long as the stones remain whole, time will not touch the Sword."

King Balinor nodded, only the faintest hint of disconcertion passing briefly through his eyes. _He's going to say thank you_, Andrea thought, _and it's going to sound hollow_. He did, and it did, but not quite as much as she expected.

The three began walking back toward the palace. Andrea trailed along on the outside edge. The business about Shea still bothered her. Worried, more than was usual for her, about whether she was meant to be seen and not heard, she finally spoke up. "Why isn't there anything about Shea?"

Balinor glanced over at her thoughtfully. _Does he have any idea that I grew up in Shady Vale?_ she wondered. "That was also at Shea's insistence." With relief, Andrea noted that he still seemed to be addressing his comments more to her father than to her. "He was very modest about the whole thing."

The Druid nodded. "That does not surprise me."

"It was the Sword itself that made it possible, he said. And most of the people here in the city didn't know the details of what had happened in the Northland, after all. Shea only told the few of us, and he didn't act as though he wanted it to go any further." Balinor smiled again. "I couldn't help wondering if your influence wasn't rubbing off on him."

"Heaven help the Valemen, then," Allanon remarked.

They climbed the steps, and passed through into the upper level of gardens, Andrea still trailing behind. She was startled when, as she went by a large bush, thick with white blossoms, a hand reached out and pulled her aside. She almost cried out, until she saw that her abductor was Amerie. White petals showered down on them.

"Shhhh!" Amerie whispered. "Want to go have some fun?"

Her tone was so jolly, Andrea found it hard to resist. "You're going to get me in trouble!" she answered tautly.

"No, I'm not." The two men had progressed some distance ahead, but now they looked back. Amerie waved to them gaily. Andrea's stomach knotted, but the other girl seemed unperturbed.

"You're not supposed to do that, are you? That's the _king_."

"Balinor's not _that_ stuffy." This was murmured as an aside. The king of Callahorn smiled and gave a brief wave in the girls' direction. Allanon motioned for them to go on, but this did not make Andrea feel much easier about it. As Amerie turned and dragged her down another path, she realized that the other girl had probably known both the king and her father since she was small. A vague sense of jealousy passed through her. But it was hard to maintain any disagreeable emotion for long around Amerie.

"I was just hoping I could get you to go with me when you came back."

"Where are we going?"

"You'll see."

The sun was making long shadows under the trees as Andrea was dragged across the compound behind the palace. Amerie ducked in the side door of a building that smelled of hay and horse manure. Once inside, they were confronted with large sacks piled one upon another that gave off the dusty, nutty scent of oats; the two girls threaded their way through.

"Now, shhhh," the servant girl put a finger to her lips. "We don't want Killian to know anybody's here. And Marlith'd kill me if she caught us snooping." She dragged Andrea down behind a divider that separated the hayloft area from the grain storage, then peered between the boards.

"Who...?" Andrea whispered.

"My sister. It's ok. She's not here yet." She paused. "Listen: Killian must be done with the grooming, he's putting up his tools."

Andrea heard the faint clunk of metal on wood. "What..?" She was cut off by voices from the same direction, raised in greeting. Then they sank too low to make out the words. "What are we doing here?" she asked the other girl, who sat listening intently.

"Spying, silly."

"On what?"

Amerie peered through the cracks again, then turned on the Druid girl with a finger against her lips to be absolutely quiet now. Silently smirking she pointed at the divider.

Andrea put her nose to the boards and peered through, an uncomfortable suspicion stirring in the back of her mind. Two figures came into view: a rangy youth with his arm around a girl a few years older than Amerie, but with the same dark curls and rounded face; the young man was kissing the girl as they ambled, and it was surprising that neither of them tripped. But when they reached the pile of hay under the loft, he tumbled down with Amerie's sister in his arms.

Amerie glanced conspiratorially at her companion; Andrea returned a nervous look. She could sense that her new friend was a little put out that she didn't seem to be sharing the enjoyment of this adventure much so far. She tried a smile that felt wan, and for Amerie's sake peeked through the cracks again.

Things were going farther out there than she felt comfortable watching. It wasn't that she didn't know what happened between grown men and women—she could hardly have been a midwife's apprentice the past 3 years and not know that. But she lacked any practical experience, and she didn't feel ready for even this kind of a demonstration just yet. She was too warm, and suddenly struck with shame, as if it were her out there somehow, as if spying on this weren't guilt enough.

"They aren't married," Andrea whispered dully.

"They will be next month. Isn't this hilarious?" Amerie mimicked Killian's rapt expression. "You are so beautiful, Marlith," she groaned in a barely audible undertone, then clapped her hand over her own mouth to hold back the mirth that shone in her eyes.

The faint warning that Andrea had been trying to ignore all this while stabbed her, figuratively, in the gut. But it was too late, and she was caught up a current of emotions that poured around her like an invisible stream: Killian's thoughts pounding inside her skull with an intensity she couldn't make sense of and yet couldn't completely ignore. But most of all Marlith's. The tickle of Amerie's mingled amusement and ignored uneasiness was swept aside like a piece of straw.

Marlith didn't want to do this, not here, not now; she had done it before and would do it again, and pretend for Killian's sake that she enjoyed it. But her shame and guilt was a knot within that Andrea couldn't undo. She heard Granny's sharp voice in her memory saying: _any boy you have catch that way isn't worth having_. Andrea whirled away from the divider, and buried her face in her hands. Tears welled up as she tried to fight it back. _Too close, too close_, her instincts cried. She found herself stumbling toward the door.

"What's wrong?" Amerie questioned at her back.

Andrea pushed and pushed and finally the rush of emotions subsided. "Can we go someplace else. Please, Amerie?"

"Ok." The other girl looked less disappointed and more worried now. "I didn't mean anything bad to happen. Honest. It's probably almost time for dinner, anyway. Come on."

Andrea stood stock still, a different kind of guilt welling up in place of the sick feeling the other had left behind. Within every child is a conviction that somehow their guardians will discern exactly what mischief they've been up to, just by looking at them. It was a conviction that showed itself in the careful way Amerie was brushing the tiniest specks of chaff from her dress. But it had suddenly occurred to the Druid girl that in her case this wasn't just the irrational suggestion of a guilty conscience: her father _would_ know—it burned unconcealably on the surface of her thoughts. The simple realization of it left her scrambling to not let the faintest hint of what had just happened follow the line of her thoughts outward.

"No, let's go somewhere else first," Andrea requested, unexpectedly. She _had_ to find something else to think of.

The servant girl pondered. "We need to do something better with your hair anyway, since you'll be having dinner with the king. Let's go to my room."

Andrea followed again, not sure that this was much better, or that it would even help. Yet, as Amerie messed about with combs and ribbons, the Druid girl discovered that there was a place within herself where all the things that were too dreadful to tell anyone, even to whisper about to herself at any other hour than the blackest before dawn, were kept. And what had happened this afternoon settled there neatly, if a little more quickly that it might otherwise have done, leaving only a faint scarlet glow on her cheeks that she hoped would be taken for health if she was lucky, general embarrassment at the worst.

* * *

The dining hall was at least as impressive as anything else in the palace, with long banners hanging down the walls and a heavily carved table and sideboards of dark wood. King Balinor rose from his chair as Andrea came in. She had managed to veto all but two of the ribbons, one of which Amerie had wound into the coronet braid she had used to contain the too-long bangs, and the other, wider one which she had tied around the loose dress to nip it in at the waist. 

"I'm glad to see you are feeling better."

A little genuine embarrassment at the recollection of yesterday afternoon proved a good cover. Andrea had never fainted before in her life, and the fact that the king had seen both that and the scene that had followed was unpleasant enough a thought to distract her.

"Thank you." On impulse, she dipped the curtsey she had learned in Leah, and immediately wished she hadn't. Was that amusement in the king's eyes? Instinct told her she couldn't afford Sensing anything else tonight, but it was a struggle not to. Unless she had gotten her feet jumbled up in some curious way that she knew nothing about, she couldn't have done _that_ badly. Granny had always told her that ordinary good manners were fine enough for anyone. And suddenly his mild eyes did not seem to be mocking her.

Maybe it was only an oversensitivity born of too much time in front of a mirror, for she didn't dare think of what else had happened today, but his intent gaze was making her a little uncomfortable. Granny Melaton had drilled a good many cautions into her head—because a girl in Andrea's position couldn't afford anything that even hinted her attentions were easily up for grabs. As a result she did not care to have anybody look at her as if...well, as if she were a girl. Only self-consciousness kept her from raising a hand to the circle of braid—in the Vale, at least, only grown women wore their hair up, and now she wished she had not liked the way it looked so much that she had agreed to leave it, once Amerie had finished. But there was something different about this stare that wasn't like the usual one of its sort, and though she couldn't decide what it was, she knew she didn't like it.

Nervously, she sat down, slipping into her chair before anyone had a chance to move it for her. The chair was too heavy to pull up to the table easily. She settled it into place with a jerk, feeling uneasily grown up and horrible childish all at once. She looked up gratefully as her father came in.

The food that was carried in almost immediately thereafter was delicious, and it did not require Allanon's gaze with its unspoken thought that she must eat something whether she wanted to or not to persuade her to find an appetite. She tried a little of everything that looked good and a few of the things that didn't, for politeness' sake.

All the same, dinner seemed long and tedious, and the conversation went on and on, into things she had no interest in and people she had never heard of. Steeling herself to pay attention, Andrea found herself wishing she could be excused from the table and go in search of Amerie. She'd daydreamed most of her life about princesses in castles, but she had discovered one thing today: she was more comfortable below stairs.

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**A/N:** A bit long, I know. But the seeds of many later things are in this chapter. Remember, the sooner I get a review, the sooner I'll remember to update. 


	11. Chapter 11

**Obligatory Disclaimer: **As always, this is only for fun and sharing, not for any nefarious purpose, intentional or otherwise. Just enjoy, ok?

**A/N: **Wow, Shanna, you reviewed so fast that I haven't had time to post a new chapter until now. I'm afraid that "A Merciless Affection" does come first.

**

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****Kings**

They left Tyrsis before dawn the next morning. As they passed through the streets, hearing the small echoing sounds of a few people beginning to rise and get about their business, and perhaps a few just finishing theirs of the night before—for a city the size of Tyrsis never quite slept entirely—Allanon reflected grimly on what he had learned from Balinor over the past two days. Nothing but vague rumors...mostly. But the responsibility he now shouldered made him particularly apprehensive. That, and a faint premonition out of the Druid Sleep that hovered not quite forgotten at the back of his mind. It would not take another day for half the population of Tyrsis to know that Allanon had returned to the Four Lands...and brought his daughter with him.

She walked beside him, a spring in her young step, unaware of the implicit dangers of that position. In spite of the ultimate necessity to do so, he was hesitant to disillusion her about that. His own youth had been marred too early by such things; whatever was left to the girl of childhood he preferred, for as long as he could, to sustain. For now, he hoped, she truly was safest at his side.

At least the older problems in Tyrsis were concluded. The mentally unbalanced younger Prince, who had seized control of the kingdom during the first days of the war, had been eventually killed by the same evil advisor who had drugged him into madness and the old King into death. This mystic, Stenmin, had also died during the siege, but not before he had led the Warlock Lord's army to Balinor's own back door. Only the Elven army's arrival at the last moment had prevented the destruction of Tyrsis. What had the Warlock Lord promised the man? And how many other Skullfollower confederates had he left behind? Walking through the streets of the city—even at this silent hour—required attention, lest they find out the answer to that question the hard way.

Finally they left the city proper, threaded through the small village of Traders' wagons at the base of the bluff by the shortest possible way—though here even more people were stirring than had been in Tyrsis itself—and soon were traveling along the south road. Allanon noted the signs of the various repairs in progress to the walls and the ramp; it would, in time, be difficult to tell that a battle had been fought before these gates. Yet if Callahorn was united in recovering from the aftereffects of the war, in the Westland, the Elven King had troubles of his own.

Eventine was, in theory, an absolute ruler. But in practice he could not do well to completely ignore his councilors: men of position and power in their own right—some of whom had been appointed to those positions in his father's time, some passing hereditarily, and some by the voice of the people, as well as those he had appointed himself. The important factor in this was that not all of these councilors agreed with all of Eventine's policies, and the King's closest friend and chief supporter—the general of the Elven army, Jon Lin Sandor—had died in the battle against the Trolls. The Elven people had rallied behind Eventine in coming to the aid of Tyrsis, but continued conflict with the Council over homeland defense had forced the king to leave the Druids' Keep unguarded since late autumn. After all, the Elven Council reasoned, with the Trolls and Gnomes defeated and fled back to into their homelands, why should the Elven army waste its manpower and supplies defending a castle that was supposed to be almost impregnable whether anyone held it or not? It had not been forgotten, either, that Elves had died defending it when it _had_ been taken. In any case, it was Allanon who had asked the Elves to secure the Keep...and where was Allanon anyway? The Druid swore soundlessly under his breath.

The Southland's loose confederation had apparently not settled on any kind of definitive reaction to the events of last summer. _Wasn't the danger over now? Had it ever really existed to begin with?_ That sort of attitude had discouraged him from any serious efforts to influence what passed for government there in quite some time. The Deep Southland was a world unto itself: it had solved most of its own internal conflicts two centuries ago, and it considered nothing of import beyond its own rough boundaries. While there would probably arise some individual pockets of hysteria over what was happening in the other lands, for the most part, the Southland would likely do no more than shiver briefly at this northern breeze. It made the Druid remotely angry that, had things turned out otherwise, the Men of the Southland would have paid for their complacency many times over by becoming once more the stronghold of Brona's power—the very kind of conflict with the other Races they had sought to avoid by their isolation.

Trade, at least, did not appear to have suffered, judging from the amount of traffic on the road. Warm as the day was becoming, he kept the hood of his black cloak up, though there was little possibility of true disguise, with his distinctive height, if anyone knew who they looking for. The Druid noted a considerable number of Dwarves, even this far south and west—testimony to Balinor's report of help from that quarter in the reconstruction of Callahorn.

That was not unexpected at all, of course. The Dwarves remained the Dwarves, as stalwart and stable as ever; and in part because no major battles had gone into the Eastland, they were probably the only people that had come through this war without an internal upheaval. Except, perhaps, for the death of the tracker Hendel. Out of the whole company Allanon had led from Culhaven, only Hendel—having cheated death so many times before—had met his end, dealing with Stenmin's treachery. That was a matter for sorrow and regret, no less for the Eastland people than for the friends of the stoic Dwarf.

Of the Gnomes and Trolls, Balinor had little to tell. What remained of the Warlock Lord's army had retreated in the face of the Elven assault, once the Skullbearers had been destroyed—the obvious source of their power gone. The Gnomes at the Keep had held out a little longer, their commander bargaining perhaps on the strength of the position, until Eventine ordered the base of the plateau fired around them. That had to have been a calculated wager, a tactic of fear in a battle of nerves. But it had been successful: the Gnomes had begged quarter and fled. No reports of anything more than minor trouble with the Gnome tribes had yet come from the Dwarves this spring. If the winter had been hungry for the defeated peoples, nothing desperate on a large scale had resulted.

It was truly amazing, the Druid considered, how little destruction this Third War of the Races had wreaked in the Four Lands. The largest loss was the city of Kern, burnt to the ground, the fields of upper Callahorn trampled, the defenses of the Druids' Keep weakened. The Warlock Lord had gambled on a single concentrated thrust to lay the Southland open. The war had been lost in one campaign.

It bothered Allanon how heavily Brona had counted on the Elven army remaining in the Westland. Was the capture of Eventine enough to explain that? Or did the reticence of the Elven High Council signify more? The Westland had always been one of the safest havens in the Four Lands, and the Elven Kings the Druids' most trusted allies. Betrayal lurking in the upper levels of the Elven government was a chilling thought—one that left him sifting fifty years worth of memories of his dealings in the Westland, looking for something he might have missed. There was no doubt: the Keep had fallen, as once long before, by treachery.

He looked west to the line of hills that ran south from Tyrsis, separating Callahorn from the lower Westland. A letter had been sent to Eventine. Balinor had not believed the situation there to be critical in any way, merely annoying, and the Druid trusted the young king's judgment, enough to delay a journey to Arborlon for a time at least. But problems were, doubtless, still waiting there for him to solve. Ignoring the demands placed on him was a possibility he had rarely bothered to consider; the burgeoning sense of responsibilities too long carried was, in point of fact, a familiar weight, if at times an irksome one. But more particularly, for a longer while than he now liked to remember, he'd had little time for anything else. Now he was taking the time, however briefly. Time to breathe, time to think. Or maybe _not_ to think—at least not about anyone's problems but his own. But how long could he afford?

The land opened out in wide undulations of checkered green and brown, stretching away to the south and east, the grey knobs of field markers at the interstices. Already there were deep brown scars everywhere, oozing with freshly turned earth: the ground was warm enough to work.

The early coming of spring would afford a certain amount of leisure later on for the country people here in the plains of lower Callahorn, in spite of the extra effort it necessitated now. The promise of summer to come was reflected in the eyes of young men and women eating the mid-day meal by twos and threes at the edge of newly plowed fields along the south road, between the vineyards and winter wheat. The sight of youthful couples hobnobbing drew Allanon's ponderings inexorably back to part of his conversation with Balinor.

The young border king, the last surviving member of the Buckhannah family, had only a few distant heirs, and his reluctance to marry, now that he was king, was beginning to be an issue with the cities' elders.

"I'm a soldier," Balinor had told him. But if wars did not give a man sons, neither did they necessarily prevent him from having them. There was more than that to the turmoil that racked the young king's mind. Ruhl Buckhannah, too, had married late; his subjects trusted that their soldier king would also wed eventually. Sooner or later Balinor would have to put aside his doubts and make a choice for the sake of his kingdom.

Even so, although the man was nearly as dear to him as a son, Allanon was not entirely pleased with what he had noted yesterday. There had to be an undeniable charm in the secreted-away daughter of one's mentor, whatever the king's erstwhile attraction to the female gender or the vast difference in their ages. That, however, was not something he was prepared to countenance.

In the uncanny way that their thoughts had begun at times to mirror each other, Andrea suddenly spoke up. "Do I...do I have to marry King Balinor—when I grow up?" she added. The Druid felt grim, both at the plaintiveness of her question, and the notion that she would assume he had the right to make that kind of choice on her behalf.

"Do you want to?" he asked.

"No." The answer was vehement. But doubt crept in. "Or do you want me to marry him?" She looked up, her eyes as plaintive as her voice had been.

"No." He shook his head.

Apparently satisfied with this answer, Andrea looked down again, going back to her own thoughts. Allanon, however, was left more troubled than before by the exchange; it forced him to consider difficulties he had not taken the time to think through sufficiently when he had made his precipitous decision to allow the girl to become a Druid in truth.

For one of the demands of that life—a greater burden than it was possible to suppose—was the very agelessness that was the whole point of the Druid Sleep. But it was something that tended to lose its immediate appeal when one saw others age and die in the normal ebb and flow of life. Standing outside that flow made it more troubling to interact with those inside it than he usually cared to focus on. More troubling still was the problem of any serious relationship which might try to span that gap. Others in the past had made that choice, taking the bitter for the sake of the sweet, but it was not something he would wish on anyone. Yet neither would he wish on anyone an extended lifetime of his own soul-loneliness of the past 10 years. And by making his daughter a Druid, it seemed he had left her with only those two options.

He allowed himself a bitter moment to consider: nature—and fate—extinguished that which was obsolete. It was a black thought, that for a moment made him wonder, even, that he and Adrianne had dared to have a child. Yet that child's—Andrea's—very existence was a matter of faith. Adrianne's faith; maybe his own, as well. Whatever the truth of that, there was nothing to be done for it now; he would have to leave that problem to the future.

There were other problems more pressing in the present. He was more worried about her disorientation sickness than he had allowed her to know. There was no doubt that walking seemed to make things worse for her, and whenever he sensed her beginning to drift, he quickly engaged her conversation. He did not, however, plan to set a pace anything like that on the way down from the Keep. Early stops would be the rule. There was an inn at the crossroads of the ferry to Leah; they would stay there tonight.

It was not so much her life he was fearful for, although sinking into that grey madness sometimes lead in that direction, luring the mind further and further from the body until the connection broke. He still believed her too strong to succumb to that. But he had begun to see that under the self-possessed exterior she had presented in the Northland, she was, after all, a young girl, and perhaps vulnerable enough to her doubts that she might be drawn into that madness every time her mind wandered. And that was something she could not afford.

It had been long enough since Allanon had dealt with anyone with the disorientation sickness that he had to think back to the most effective means of neutralizing it. _Yes...that was it_. A half-formed idea began to take shape. She might not care for that idea; he wasn't sure he did himself. It was certainly not what he'd had in mind to begin with. But there it was. As he pondered the possibilities, he wavered between a faint amusement and a vague sense of irritation. And amid his reflections, as always, as it did everything else, time ate up the miles.

**

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A/N:** Kind of short, I know. Have I mentioned how much I enjoy writing from Allanon's POV? 


	12. Chapter 12

**Obligatory Disclaimer:  
**This story's all in fun,  
So please don't be annoyed.  
When all is said and done,  
Brooks still owns the toys.

**A/N:** And the prize for my most faithful reviewer, Shanna, is...another chapter! This one's on the short side, from Andrea's POV. But much more fun coming up after this. :-)

**

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Cabbages**

On the second day after leaving Tyrsis, they came out of the settled farm country of Lower Callahorn into the wild, rolling hills above the Duln Forest. Only a few scattered farmsteads—the outposts of those who wanted so little to do with their fellow beings that they did not care whether they considered themselves fugitives from the Borderlands or the Southland—were visible in the distance, and these grew less and less common. The afternoon before, the main road had veered east again toward the Rappahalladran River and the crossroads village where they'd spent the night. There a ferry joined the road from Leah with the main north-south way, giving the traveler the option of reaching the deep Southland through a bead-strung line of small kingdoms—the few remaining in the Southland—on the east side of the river, or through the Hill Communities and the Plains to the west of the river. This latter way was their route, until they reached the edge of the forest itself, where the road turned in a wide loop, avoiding the central bulk of the hills; they did not follow it. Instead they camped just within the fringes of the Duln, and the following morning took a footpath leading more directly south.

On this third day, as the rising country ahead grew more and more familiar, Andrea found herself becoming increasingly desperate. If her father was planning on leaving her in the Vale... She could not quite believe that. But she didn't know what else to believe. Allanon's farewell to Shea had been regretful, but it had also seemed—at the time, at least—very final. And what other reason could there be to go to an obscure hamlet like Shady Vale?

All the same, he didn't seem to be treating her like a nuisance, to be gotten rid of as soon as possible. Instead, they went along in reasonably good company, as if there were all the time in the world for their conversations; finally she'd given up feeling anxious, for the most part, in favor of simply enjoying the time as much as possible. But she couldn't help thinking about it, especially now that the Vale was less than a day's journey away. She made her arguments to herself in quiet moments. Allanon had made no secret of her identity to King Balinor, and she didn't think he would have done that if he'd meant to deny her again. Or was he going off to do something dangerous, and didn't want her along? She wavered between anxiety and indignation over that thought. After she'd gone all the way to the Northland by herself!

However much she pondered the problem, though, she was led back to the same question: what could she do about it? She was _not_ going to stay in Shady Vale, she knew that much. Two nights ago, in the inn, as she watched a square of moonlight creep across the floor in the wee hours, she had actually considered running away, right then and there, rather than go back to Shady Vale at all. She might join a Trader's company: life on the road was all right. But there were precious few skills she could offer—apart from her needlework maybe—that were not available in plenty among traderfolk already; and any Trader who might take her on just for Uncle Curzad's sake would probably refuse to do so without his express permission. They weren't far out of Tyrsis yet, and Varfleet was not that far away either. There was always the possibility of finding work in a city as a servant or an apprentice. More than one young person in the Hill Communities left home to do this; the hills were a place—so Granny said—people were either running to or running from. The idea of being responsible only to herself, as she had been on the way to the Northland, was a heady draught from the well of freedom. But there was something missing—whatever had sustained her on that journey had never quite returned—and there was still an empty place in her that was troubled now by the thought of being so alone again. Anyway—she had decided, hunkering down in blankets that seemed dreadfully thin, trying not to wish for her own star-sprinkled quilt back in her own inn room—she did not want to run away from her father. She had gone through too much to find him. And she intended to stay with him just as long as she could manage.

Andrea shivered again as they walked through the sun-and-shade of the forest, rising and falling, but ever rising into the hills, and wondered if it were more than her wretched thoughts chilling her. At Paranor it had not seemed strange: north of the mountains, winter was still clinging to the tail of spring. But, in spite of the warmth of the open sunshine before they reached the woods, she had been grateful for her cloak. Even with it, she had never felt quite warm enough, and was glad, when they stopped at night, for a fire to huddle by. Something inside her, a new instinct she did not like the sensation of, and yet was beginning to find true, told her that she had better get used to it, that it was just how things were going to be. Rebelliously, she willed herself to feel the sun's heat. That helped, if only a little.

As much as she had been trying not to think about Shady Vale, as she started to recognize the country around her, rocks and trees and hills and outlying farms, her thoughts were drawn inexorably to the hamlet. She could imagine it there: Granny bending in her herb garden, weeding and planting in the dark earth; Shea and Flick up on the roof of the inn, replacing weathered grey shingles with the yellow-white of new wood; Uncle Curzad stepping outside from time to time to look up at them. She imagined these scenes—willfully—without her own presence in them. But spring in the Vale was bright in her mind, bright with more than just color, and Andrea found herself troubled by the notion that she might actually have missed the very place she was now so determined not to be. _It's just people_, she thought, _Granny and Uncle Curzad and Shea and Flick. Four people out of a whole village. _And they were people she now couldn't face. There was too much to explain that couldn't be explained. And the dread of the Vale in general became the dread of those faces in particular, and the questions she couldn't answer. She could not help wondering if her father would have any answers for them either, and what those might be.

As soon as the sun sank into the tops of the trees, they camped. They were not far north of the valley, and the Druid girl had not been certain they would not go on into the Vale that night. She was glad they had not. For the last few hours their progress had become like another invisible tug-of-war. Andrea had started, almost unconsciously at first, to drag her steps, taking as much advantage as she dared of the fact that her father had to walk slowly anyway for her to keep up—until she felt the silent flare of his temper and knew she was pushing too far.

Now she sat glaring into the fire, struggling not to give in to the cheerful memories of summer evenings spent in these woods, the stories she and the Ohmsfords had told around just such a fire, her clear voice rising above their rougher ones in some song that would make them all laugh. Almost against her will, she had felt hungry for dinner tonight, as she had not the past two nights. She wished her body would make up its mind.

What could she do? Her father had told her that she would have to deal with the consequences of her assumptions for herself, and she had believed that meant he did not intend to tell her exactly what his plans were until they reached the Vale, so she hadn't bothered asking again. Already today she had pushed further than she should. But they were so close to their destination, and she could not bear it any longer.

"I don't want to go back to Shady Vale." Doing her best to modulate her tone, to make it a simple announcement, she did not look not up.

"That has become rather obvious," Allanon remarked from where he sat leaning against a tree a few paces away. Yes, he did sound aggravated, but he continued quietly, "It might be helpful to understand why."

_For who? For me?_ "I can't go back there," Andrea said. "I'm going to be in so much trouble. Running off like that...Uncle Curzad will be furious."

"So, I believe, would I." The girl looked sharply up at her father as he said this. "Andrea, perhaps the most important lesson you will ever learn in your life is how to choose your battles: knowing those times when it is better to run away, and the rest of the time, when you must stand and fight. And you aren't going to run from this."

Not at all certain what to make of this statement at the moment, she went on. "I...I lost my horse—in the earthquake, remember—I found her dead afterward. I should have been more careful, I should have let her go before then, or..." Tears welled up unexpectedly at that memory, blurring her vision as she willed them not to fall.

"Your horse?" he asked abruptly, "Starlight?"

She nodded, suddenly conscious that the mare's loss might be of significance to someone besides her foster uncle. She sneaked a hand to her face in a quick swipe. She sniffed firmly. "Uncle Curzad will be so angry." Though that now seemed of far less importance than that her father should be angry.

"Come here." She went and sat beside him, huddled miserably, though just a little warmer, under his encircling arm. "If Curzad Ohmsford is angry at you, it will be because he has been worried, not because of the horse or anything else. I suspect he is more concerned about what's become of you than you imagine."

"I suppose so," she agreed, guiltily. "But I don't want to have to face him, to tell him..."

"What is the worst he could possibly do?"

The level of what she had done, as she envisioned it in Uncle Curzad's eyes, was beyond any punishment she could even imagine. Would the innkeeper himself have any idea how to deal with her? And of more concern to the girl was the possibility which this question suggested—that Allanon really did intend to leave her in the Ohmsfords' care again.

"Send me to my room for fifty years?"

"I might do that," her father did not resist the jest in her exaggerated suggestion, "but he wouldn't."

"He'll just _look_ at me," she said, serious then. "And I'll feel...like a _bug_ or something."

"Would you feel better, then, to let him go on worrying?"

She had not actually considered this before—what if she had simply disappeared and never come back? There were a few people Andrea would love to burden with guilt over something like that—if they happened to care at all, she reflected pessimistically—but she wouldn't do that to Uncle Curzad, not ever. "No, I guess not. But I still don't want to be left there again." She looked up, hoping to read something in her father's expression.

He nodded slightly, staring at the fire.

"Are you really going to leave me there?" Andrea asked, in impatient desperation. And as usual, though this time more like a slow release of breath, her father's mind became a solid wall to her again. "Tomorrow," he said, and shifted slightly. "Now, get some sleep. I want to make an early start."

"I can't sleep," the girl said, her own temper fraying completely at last. "It's not fair." Her voice rose to almost a squeak, and she shut her mouth.

"Life isn't fair, Andrea. And a Druid's life is less fair than most, as I believe I've mentioned before. Now rest."

Andrea sat silent between chagrin and frustration for a minute, burrowing her head into a comfortable spot against his arm. _Druid's life, hah! _What more of that would she see at this rate? She'd _thought_ she was supposed to be a Druid herself now. Yet here she was, on her way back to being a stupid Valegirl. She wrestled angrily with this for while—but in the end she had little option but to let the frustration drain out of her, and tears once more came not quite to the surface. "It's not easy to go to sleep, anyway," she murmured, indulging in the complaint as a salve to her feelings, though it seemed to fall into the dark without even being heard. There was no sound for a time but their own breathing and the crackle of the fire, and beyond that the still, night noises of the forest.

"Stare at the fire," her father's voice rumbled softly. Andrea let her eyes open from being half-closed, by which she had been attempting to feign sleep. "Just stare at it." He murmured a few notes of music. "Do you know that?"

"Yes," she said, trying to keep her eyes locked on the dancing flames. She knew the tune: the words were sighing and sad and flowed into each other over and over again.

"Keep repeating it in your thoughts, and keep watching the fire."

The Druid girl stared, letting the song fill her mind, letting the story under the words brush away all the sharp edges of the day. After a time, she found herself drifting.

"I'll teach you other ways, later." But she was already on the edge of dreams, knowing that tomorrow, like it or not, she was going back to Shady Vale.

"No matter what happens," she murmured, not sure that she spoke aloud at all, "I want to stay with you forever."

* * *

**A/N:** Up next, back to Shady Vale. _-grins evilly-_


	13. Chapter 13

**Obligatory Disclaimer:** As always, just for fun.

**A/N:** Yay, I have a new reviewer! Many thanks to Kitty Invictus and the ever-faithful Shanna.

A brand new point of view here, after a bit of omniscient exposition—Curzad Ohmsford.

* * *

**Vale**

Shady Vale was a village of less than four hundred people, though its population had fluctuated to more or less than that over the past hundred years since Southland Men had come north to the valley to settle there. Not many who came stayed. Only those able to draw a profit from a spur of the north-south trade, or eke out a living from toilsomely cleared land remained for very long.

Far from the benefits of deep Southland sawmills and craftsman, the settlers had built their homes from the native stones and timber. The styles varied a little depending on the birthplaces of their original owners, but whether they had been stripped or squared or left raw, almost every house in the Vale was constructed of felled logs from the Duln.

Almost every house but one.

A hundred and twenty years before, two tall men had driven a wagonload of dressed lumber into a clearing near what would one day be the South Road, at the south end of a depression in the hills which would—some score of years later—turn from an empty vale into a town. And these two men, one brown as a woodberry, the other as dark as the deepest shadows under the trees, began building a house there, while two pretty ladies, one with hair the color of wheat, and the other with curls like autumn leaves made a camp and watched them.

The house was for the ladies, built after the current fashion of houses in the deeper Southland, two framed stories tall, with glass windows and cast metal handles to the doors.

But they didn't go on staying there either in the end. And eighty years before, the brown-haired Druid had sealed it up and left a pouch of gold coins and a key with the keeper of the new inn, Jarik Henderton, who put the key with his others, and thought little enough about it, except to send his nephews to check the doors and shutters and replace roof shingles now and again after a storm.

In the course of time, as such things happen, Jarik Henderton's original inn burned to the ground. It was rebuilt, of course, though the stress of it was the finish for the old innkeeper, who was—by that time—Jarik's grandson; not long afterward, Jarik's great-grandson, Marek, took his family back to Heartland, and left their cousins, the Ohmsfords, to run the new inn along the South Road. And the Ohmsfords kept, unused, the old key to the odd house.

By the thirteenth spring before the present one, the clearing had become nearly grown over, and the unpainted boards had weathered grey. The Vale people avoided the place, when they thought about it at all, which was seldom, since the trees hid it from the road. But early that spring a pretty lady with red-brown curls had begun to live there, and brought her baby girl with her. She'd had her own key to the house; and she paid the innkeeper's two young sons, one brown and sturdy like his father, and one thin and Elven blond, to come whitewash the outside of it.

Then she died. Curzad Ohmsford closed up the house, took the little girl to live at the inn, and locked the lady's key in a drawer. Someday he would give Anne the key, but not yet. Too many things set her off as it was.

He had let her go to Leah by herself for the first time last summer. _She'd been there a dozen times_, she'd reasoned to him; _she was thirteen years old—that very day, in fact. She deserved some kind of privilege for her birthday; and Shea and Flick were not that far ahead of her. _So he'd let her go.

She had not come back.

She _had_ been in Leah, that much was certain. The Prince of Leah had set his father's bounders combing their hills for her all summer, to no avail. Then as autumn waned, a Trader who sometimes came through the inn said he'd seen her in Varfleet, talking with the leader of a Border caravan. No one else, apparently, had seen her since.

So with winter settling over the Four Lands, Curzad Ohmsford had sent messages to every other Trader and innkeeper he knew. Shea and Flick would go to Varfleet in the spring if there hadn't been any word.

Nothing.

* * *

In the first week of April, the Vale innkeeper sat in the empty common room, working over his account books. It was nearly time for his yearly rendering of the dividends to Marek, and the additional payment that would one day make the inn his own and his sons'. It was still cool enough for a fire in the mornings, and the coals were just settling on the hearth. His missing fosterling was very far in the back of his thoughts just then, pushed there by time, the force of daily toil, and the long string of numbers he was trying to balance. Curzad shifted the paper. 

The front door swung open. He looked up. There were rarely any customers at this time of day: it was well past breakfast, even for late-risers, but still too early for lunch.

The door fell closed behind them with a thud. Curzad Ohmsford slowly pushed back his chair and stood up.

Never would he have imagined what he saw, but it was difficult not to feel that it might be some kind of dream or apparition. Taller than the innkeeper had remembered, and dressed in the same black robes as of an evening last spring, was the mysterious wanderer Allanon. And no less surprising, in spite of being more familiar—though it took Curzad a moment to recognize her as such—standing pale and troubled in the tall man's shadow, was the girl he had worried over this year past.

"Anne? It is...?" he stammered incredulously. Of course it was her! Yet for a moment, while his heart pounded loudly with the shock, the solemn-faced young woman standing at the door seemed not at all the same rowdy girl that for nearly ten years had pelted home through that entrance.

A hesitant pause followed; then the girl's voice broke out, "Uncle Curzad, don't look like that." Another moment's hesitation, and she fled to him with her eyes full of tears.

"Anne!" Curzad hugged her roughly close.

"Where on earth did you find her?" the innkeeper asked Allanon. Without waiting for an answer, Curzad took her by the shoulders, "Where have you been, Anne! I was worried sick about you. Didn't know where you were or what could have happened to you..." He broke off, his voice cracking despite its intended gruffness.

"I'm sorry," she said. "I didn't mean to worry you. I just..." She stepped gingerly out of his embrace and looked back to the dark wanderer who had delivered her to the inn. It was as if she expected the stranger to supply an answer for her, but only the faintest hint of an expression creased the corners of the man's mouth and, for the moment at least, he said nothing at all.

Anne's gaze, as she turned back to face the innkeeper, held an intensity that he had learned—after so many years of coping with her fantastical flights—was a demand for his complete attention. "Uncle Curzad," she took a breath and bit her lip. It was a hesitation—also from long past experience—that was a signal she was about to say something he very likely did not want to hear. However, this fact was mediated temporarily by the sheer relief of having her home safe and whole; the sturdy Valeman's broad smile relaxed only slightly.

"Uncle Curzad," Anne began again nervously, and she shifted her posture slightly to indicate the intent of her words. "This is my father."

There was a count of four or five heartbeats, if the innkeeper had bothered to count them, while everything, so newly turn right side up, turned upside down again. No, that was not possible. Anne was safe home again, and after he had duly scolded her and heard what she had to say for herself they would all...

Curzad Ohmsford pulled a chair from the nearest table and let his broad frame sink into it. He breathed out in a long puff, staring at the wayward girl without really seeing her. He shouldn't...he simply should not have ever let her go alone to Leah. All winter he had recriminated himself for having done so. Not because she wasn't trustworthy—most of the time. He only felt that she was unreliable where the subject of her truant father was concerned. Or perhaps it was that she was _too_ reliable on that subject. But up until she had vanished, the Valeman had never wanted to believe she would actually run away from his home—her home, all these years—to look for a father she had never known. Their previous conversations on this subject had always been left unresolved; Curzad had not believed there to be any possibility of a favorable solution: no one in the village even knew where the girl's mother had come from. And though he did not care for the talk that had gone around the village about Adrianne, he was certain that if the child's father were not dead, he would probably want nothing at all to do with her. He had not liked putting the matter that plainly to her, though he had tried once or twice. He did not want to see his young charge suffering over it, and she did not, in truth, have the least idea of the real prospects of such a search. Always he had hoped she would outgrow the notion and simply accept Curzad as her father, as Shea had so readily done. She never had, though she'd said less to him about it as she grew older. But it was always there, an unspoken motive in her actions, and his tacit disapproval of it had caused some uncomfortable moments between them.

And now... It was obvious she was serious. Curzad looked past her to the man at the door—the mysterious man who had come into his inn the year before looking for Shea, claiming to be the wandering historian Allanon.

Curzad had never known for certain what the last of that business had been, or the real connection, if any—though the unusual nature of it all led him to believe there might be some link—between their middle-of-the-night departure for Leah and the visits of Allanon and that other fellow last spring. He had heard even odder things since last summer, and there had been a few more unexpected visitors, who spoke vaguely of the detours the young men's trip had apparently taken. It made him unsettled. Though, as he recalled, Anne had not even been in the Vale at the time of these earlier occurrences—no, that was while she'd been south in Heartland. Had he actually—Curzad berated himself—told her himself about the historian's appearance? If she had gone looking for Allanon because she imagined that this stranger might be her father...

"Is this true?" Curzad addressed his query to the man. Anne did not tell lies, in spite of her high-strung nature. Curzad had learned this about her when she was very young, and he had seldom doubted her word since. But this seemed so suddenly and utterly improbable—it would not sink into his head without further confirmation. Quite frankly, Curzad was not sure how to handle the situation if... This could not possibly be true.

The tall stranger nodded slowly. "Yes."

The innkeeper was glad he was already sitting down. The clearly audible release of Anne's held breath did not help.

The Valeman began tapping on the table quietly with a thick forefinger. She didn't look at all like the man, Curzad argued to himself, wanting any excuse to deny it. No, she had always been her mother's daughter, without doubt. Yet where that resemblance ended...it was slight, to be sure, but it was there. Only because he had a good memory for faces—in particular, one so strikingly lovely—could he see this as the two stood before him. And so many of the vague answers Adrianne had had for the village's questions, taken by some as evidence of a wary guilt, now began to make a little more sense. Along with these things Curzad had an uneasy impression that, in some way he could not otherwise define, the two...fit.

The innkeeper rubbed a hand across his coarse eyebrows to dispel the sensation. "I'm not going to pretend I understand any of this.

"Oh, I'm not denying that what you say may be so," he raised his hand at the beginning of Anne's protest, "I won't dispute that, for the moment at least." Curzad frowned at the tall fellow. The Valeman did not run a rough type of inn, although there was the occasional incident, but no man in his position could afford to be easily intimidated, and under ordinary circumstances he would not have felt unable to cope. But to face down a man of Allanon's height, manner and reputation in the empty common room alone troubled him.

It was Anne that drew his gaze finally, standing with her hands together in an attitude almost of supplication. Curzad's voice assumed a note of reason. "Anne, now listen to me. Haven't I always tried to be as fair with you as with Shea and Flick? But now...you disappear for a year—almost a full _year_, mind you—and you come back and say to me: 'this man is my father'..." He trailed off shaking his head. "You haven't," he addressed this to Allanon, "brought her back to stay then, I suppose? I expect I have nothing to say about this at all?"

"The business which has prevented me from caring for my daughter has been concluded," Allanon replied, leaving the innkeeper with the unpleasant sense that he would not believe the answer if he dared ask what that business had been. "I intend to keep her with me from now on. I did believe, however, that you should be informed of her safety and her whereabouts, since she disappeared—as I understood it—without your knowledge or permission." Anne winced noticeably.

Curzad Ohmsford looked at the other man. "I thank you for that," he said, a twinge of earnest gratitude diffusing the stiffness he felt for the moment. But a reappraisal of the situation hardened his expression as he went on. "I don't usually ask for lengthy explanations, because I believe a man's business is mostly his own." It was a necessary attitude in his trade. "But under the circumstances... It may not seem reasonable to you, but I think, after being Anne's guardian for, what—almost 10 years now?—I deserve some kind of explanation, from someone." The sweep of the innkeeper's nod took in the girl pointedly.

The silence was thick as Allanon seemed to ponder this, then he gestured to the table.

* * *

Before anyone could move, the door leading toward the back section of the inn opened and the brown head of Flick Ohmsford appeared. "Father?" he began on a querying note, then, taking in the scene in the common room, stopped. "Nevermind." The door fell closed. The sound of running faded quickly, though the call for his brother was momentarily muffled and unmuffled until the swinging door settled on its hinges. 

Curzad Ohmsford listened puzzled, half-compelled to go in search of his sons himself, but he turned his attention back to the matter at hand.

Allanon took a seat across the small round table from him. Anne pulled a chair close, but hesitantly, glancing uneasily at both men.

Curzad watched over his clasped hands. After they were sitting down he leaned forward. "When I spoke to you before, you seemed a decent enough person. But...if you _are_ Anne's father, well...

"In the time she's been here—ten years as I said before—I'd never seen you in my inn at all until last spring. Even then, you seemed to want to speak to Shea." Though, come to think of it, the Valeman realized that he had very likely mentioned the girl himself while they were talking prior to Shea's return home that evening, typical of the innkeeper's own generally free and easy manner of conversation. Curzad could not help betray a bit of unease at that memory, and made a resolve to keep a closer guard on his tongue in the future. "You certainly gave no indication that Anne had anything to do with you. Of course, she wasn't here at the time. But there have never been any letters, any messages of any kind. Ever. You have never given any indication, in ten years' time, that you were concerned about her at all. Now how am I to understand that?" The innkeeper spread a thick-fingered hand flat on the table.

"I was very concerned about her, Curzad Ohmsford," Allanon stated grimly. "Until quite recently I have been involved in a dangerous business, and have had some very dangerous enemies. Certainly, by now, news of a Third Race War has trickled through this inn, even if your sons have told you nothing." In addition to the renewed consideration of the things he had been hearing, Allanon's tacit expectation of that possibility bothered the innkeeper. The man went on, "My part in these matters was more considerable than you perhaps realize. If anyone had known that Andrea was my daughter, if I had ever given any indication that this was the case, she would not have been safe, innkeeper, not here nor anywhere else."

This was allowed time to sink in. Rumors had been rampant about the war up north. Curzad had heard strange things, some of them frightening enough to set a grown man's hair on end, even if they were only fireside tales. And the war in Callahorn had taken on the substance of something more than a tale. Amid all the talk, Allanon's name had been mentioned—not all that unusual perhaps: to go by older stories, the historian was often in the midst of one kind of trouble or another—but more often than not, in these recent tales, it was connected with dark hints of magic. That gave the innkeeper pause. What was more unsettling was that Shea's name had come up, though less directly. Curzad had determined that if Shea and Flick did not choose to tell him everything about that trip to Leah last summer, he wasn't going to press them—after all, they were grown men—but he found himself wondering exactly what Allanon had wanted with Shea. In fact, he found himself beginning to resent whatever role the man was playing in the lives of his children.

"Do you have something to say for yourself, girl?" Curzad turned his attention abruptly to Anne, as perhaps a safer vent for his simmering anger. Even if he was no longer, in fact, her guardian, the habit of it was strong, and he was most definitely loath to relinquish his responsibility for her. "Where's Starlight? And I was told you were seen in Varfleet."

"I'm sorry," Anne burst out before he went any further. "Starlight went down; she got away and fell." Her voice was thick with regret.

"An accident! Were you hurt?"

Anne shook her head. "No. Uncle Curzad, I didn't set out to disobey you—I really didn't. I didn't plan this when I went to Leah. You have to believe that."

Curzad shook his head faintly. "I don't know."

She went on, looking occasionally from her hands to the Valeman and back again. "Just...when Shea and Flick had already left Leah by the time I got there, I _meant_ to come home. But...I _had_ to find my father. You _know_ I did. Uncle Curzad, please, _please_ understand."

"I know nothing of the kind," he said, a bit harshly. "Though however you managed it...I do wish you'd given me a bit more warning." He looked at the tall stranger doubtfully again, then let a little of the gruffness fade out of his voice. "To tell you the truth, Anne, I'm not at all disposed to allow you to go away again with this man. Not, I suppose," he caught a glint of warning in the tall man's eye, "that I can do anything about it. That is, if you really want to leave us." He looked at his fosterling's expression carefully, leaving unsaid the hint that if she did not want to go, no one—not even this dark fellow—was going to drag her away, not if the Ohmsfords had anything to do with it.

* * *

A sudden clamor from the back hall cut through the tension in the air, distracting them all to look up as Shea and Flick burst in through the double doors. 

"All right," said Flick, coming to a halt perhaps ten steps from the table; his arms were crossed in front of him, and Curzad had scarcely ever seen such a look in his son's eyes, composed of both fear and determination. The youth addressed Allanon. "What now?"

"What do you mean, Flick?" the other answered impassively.

Flick looked toward his father, who was puzzled at this exchange, but unable to cope with anything more than was already on his plate at the moment.

"Sons," the elder Ohmsford said, "I have just learned some...news. It would seem that this man is Anne's true father."

Shea and Flick looked at the other two, and especially at Anne, with an incredulity that mirrored the innkeeper's own.

"Father," Flick began, "do you really think..."

"It's good to see you again, Shea, Flick." Allanon had risen and stepped forward now to clasp each of their hands in turn, forcing Flick out of his defensive posture.

"I...wasn't sure we'd see you again," Shea said quietly.

"Circumstances have altered somewhat," the other man replied.

"Well, the circumstance that concerns me most at the moment," Curzad said, becoming vaguely aware of another unknown undercurrent in the conversation, which did not improve his humor, "is what is going to become of Anne."

The girl's eyes found her foster uncle's again, pleading for a measure of understanding and forgiveness that he was not sure, at the moment, he was able to give. It occurred to him, suddenly, that the intensity of her gaze, which he had grown so used to resisting over the years, was very much like the strange, hard look he had noted in the man's eyes last spring—a look that was still there now. "I want to go with my father," she said.

Flick started to make a noise of protest, but Curzad raised his hand and shrugged. "What can I do?" he sighed. And of course Flick had no better answer to that than he did himself.

Allanon spoke to Anne, "If you have anything here that belongs to you, go and get it."

The innkeeper started at the implication—a very clear implication—of immediate departure; he had the feeling he was about to lose the answers to a great many questions, as well as losing—permanently, this time—the headstrong girl that had become so wound up their lives. "This is a bit sudden—no need to hurry off." Using his skills as an innkeeper seemed the only option he had left. "Certainly you can stay, at least for lunch?"

* * *

**A/N:** This was a difficult chapter to come back and edit after all this time. It feels a bit silly to me. Although not as silly as I remember the earliest versions being. 


	14. Chapter 14

**Obligatory Disclaimer:** Shannara belongs to Brooks. I'm just having fun. Got it?

**A/N:** Sorry it's been a while (those of you who are actually waiting for another chapter!); real life has been demanding my energies lately. Kudos to Richie Selene for joining the little crew of reviewers! And to Shanna for hanging in there!

Back to Andrea's PoV. An uncomfortable chapter, where the chickens come home to roost, as it were. If you're reading this, I'd really love to hear from you...

* * *

**Inn**

Andrea did not wait to hear the answer. She was going, and that was what mattered. She ducked through the swinging doors, her feet carrying her unerringly to the little room she had called hers for 10 years, hearing in her memory Uncle Curzad's shouted admonition not to run in the hall, he was running an inn not a circus. She slid to a halt with her old practiced precision as she reached the door. Yet she slowed almost to the point of being frozen as her hand went to the knob, trembling at...she knew not what—for how could there be anything here that could hurt her? Ignoring it, she opened the door.

The room was a little dustier than usual, but other than that, it was possible that she really _had_ only been on a short trip to Leah. A tangle of brown thread from the mending of her riding pants was stuck to the braided mat on the floor. The star-patterned quilt hung over the end of her bed at the same inexact angle she had not bothered to correct in the hurry of that morning. Nothing had been touched since she left.

It took her a moment to take another step, to remind herself that she had come back to get things, to take them out of this room, not to stay here. She moved to the trunk, crouched down in front of it and lifted the lid; she reached inside, taking clothes out and stacking them on the bed. It was as if she had been given permission to pack and run away from home.

Uncle Curzad had actually done that once, when she was six years old. She had flown into a temper—over what, she could not clearly remember—and announced that she was going to run away. He had insisted that she pack all her things in a bag which he cheerfully provided, and sent her with fond wishes out the front door of the inn. She'd gotten as far as the ford before she dissolved in tears: the forest was so big and the road so long and the bag so heavy, and Uncle Curzad must not really care because he had let her run away. When she came back, he had been waiting to take her in, asked her if she'd had a pleasant journey and whether she'd come very far, given her dinner, and put her in her own bed to sleep.

Andrea sank the remaining way to her knees, conscience and self-will warring together. It was _not wrong_ to leave with her father...and yet it was not right either, somehow, to go away from the Ohmsfords, or even from Granny, who might understand her reasons better—not the way she had done it. And this was a fine time to realize it, when there was nothing she could do to change any of it. Could she have run away from the inn itself? she wondered suddenly. When that strange impulse came, if she had not already been far from here, it was possible she might never have deliberately done so. It was a frightening thing to know, now.

The lid of her small wooden treasure box caught so stiffly from lack of use that she had to rattle it back and forth to get it open. But it opened on the wood and rose-petal scent of memories, clinging to all she had stashed there—the jumble of her childhood, little things she had kept out of the jetsam of life at the inn: a handful of banded stones she was once so sure were magical; snail shells; a string of buttons, all different, found loose from their pinnings here at the inn, and from who knew how many distant places; the smaller inlaid box with her good scissors and thread and needlecases; the pen and last inkbottle she had used at school (she shook it, but the ink was dried up); a red ribbon, given on the occasion of her eighth birthday, that she had embroidered with tiny flowers...she'd worn it in her hair when she needed to look like "a proper girl", and at other times, when she went into the woods alone and pretended to be a fairy princess, a changeling in disguise. If she could find the right place in the forest and say the right word, as she waved a flower for a magic wand, everything would change back and she would find herself in her own country again.

She started at a sound behind her, and put the cover down quickly, as if her memories would be bare for anyone to see. Shea had opened the door.

"Can we come in?" he asked, at odds with their rudeness, since he and Flick were already through the doorway. Shea must have noticed the odd expression looking out at her from the tiny mirror fastened inside the lid of the trunk, because he said, "Are you alright, Anne?"

"I can't believe this," Flick exclaimed loudly, without any further prelude. "Are you out of your mind?" He threw himself down on the edge of the bed; a pile of clothes bounced off, and the girl glared. "You tell her, Shea! She doesn't know anything about what she's doing."

Shea waved him silent. "First, I want to hear what she has to say." The youth fixed her with his Elven-blue eyes, a strange unreadable expression on his face. "You were there, weren't you?"

Andrea stared, startled, aware immediately of his meaning. "How did you know? I didn't..."

"It was your pack." Shea shook his head slowly; he looked far more hale than the last time she had seen him, all traces of scratch and bruise had disappeared—she had to remind herself that it had been _last_ _summer_—though he was still a little thin. But now he went very pale. "I wasn't sure what to think—how you could have lost your things, or whether you were dead, or how you could have been in the Northland at all. Then when we came back home and you were gone..."

"Then it _was_ yours?" Flick looked aghast. "And I told Shea even you couldn't be that stupid."

Andrea ignored Flick and his comment. "I hid while you were awake, so you wouldn't be upset. I never even thought about you recognizing my pack." Everything else had seemed so clear to her, yet she had not realized that. She felt the blood drain out of her own face, to pool in an uncomfortable knot in her stomach.

"Then you really were in the Northland!" Flick stated incredulously. "Does Father know that?"

Andrea finally turned a sharp look on him. "Not unless you told him."

Shea shook his head again. "We haven't even told him all of what happened to us yet."

"Well, don't!"

"I think we're going to have to sooner or later. Maybe sooner." Shea looked meaningfully at his brother, as if this were part of a continuing debate between them, but the stockier youth still had his attention focused on her.

"Do you know what was happening up there?" Flick said. "Just what did you think you were doing?"

Andrea stood up and retrieved the tumbled pile of clothes from the floor. Flick was already getting tiresome, and she did not want to face the reaction she anticipated would come to her answer to that question. "Looking for my father, I guess."

"You guess?" began Flick, but the Druid girl rounded on him with her eyes flashing.

"Well, I did it, didn't I?"

Flick opened his mouth and shut it again; he looked to Shea for support.

"Look, I don't understand all this," the fair-haired youth said. "_Is_ Allanon really your father?"

"Isn't that what I said? Isn't that what Uncle Curzad said?"

Flick was staring at her as if she had suddenly turned into some strange sort of insect he'd found in the woodpile.

"What I'm wondering is," Shea continued, "is that what Allanon said?"

Flick sent his brother an eye-rolling glance that defied whether that made any difference.

Andrea folded her arms, disliking the doubt of something she'd thought herself absolutely sure of, that she _was_ absolutely sure of, that stabbed her at Shea's question. "Yes. If you don't believe me, that's your problem." She thumped the spilled clothing back onto the bed, defying their ability to argue the point any further.

The two Ohmsfords looked at each other. She knew that once they wouldn't have taken her seriously, but she had the feeling that—like herself—whatever they had experienced last summer had made them sure, if unwilling, believers of almost anything.

."Great," said Flick at last, throwing up his hands. "Just great."

"What are you going to do now?" Shea asked finally. "I don't think you should decide anything too quickly."

_Too late_, she thought. "I _am_ going," she said insistently. They had better not try to talk her out of it. "You heard that."

Shea studied the floorboards for a moment, then raised his head. "What about Father? Maybe you didn't realize it out there just now, but after all he's done for you, that had to hurt."

"On top of everything," added Flick.

_Oh, yes_. She had seen the look on Curzad Ohmsford's face. Like the look he'd always had when she tried to define herself as someone other than an Ohmsford, but multiplied a hundred times. She knew what that had done to her foster father, however much she wished not to. The wrenching ache of it returned, making demands on her as a Valegirl, as Curzad's ward, as all the things she had learned to be without meaning to. She hadn't been willing to admit it to herself before, but for all that they had never been the family she wanted most, the Ohmsfords had been a family nonetheless—the only one she'd had for a long time. And that mattered far more than she'd ever allowed herself to see. Her insides tumbled with the twist of conflicting loyalties. She hadn't considered how the reality of Shady Vale would crash into the other, more preferred reality she had been building since she went north from Varfleet. She felt it begin to collapse in on her: Uncle Curzad's pain, Shea's worry, Flick's puzzled half-anger, half-fear. "I'm sorry," she whispered.

"You should tell him that, not us."

"This has always been your home," Flick said reproachfully.

"Not always!"

"How can you actually want to go away with Allanon!" Flick Ohmsford's voice held a vehemence she did not understand

"He's my father," she said resolutely; what followed from that fact ought to be as clear to everyone as it was to her. "And I am going with him."

There was a long pause; another curious expression crossed Shea's face, as if something had just occurred to him. "So why _did_ you leave your pack? And where have you been since last summer?" _And where_, she couldn't help hearing, _was Allanon?_

Andrea began making piles again. Besides the things in the treasure box, she had a tiny horde of books. That was another thing Uncle Curzad had not entirely approved of: reading was all well and good, a person needed to know how, he averred, but there was something improper, even unhealthy, about going around with one's nose in a book all the time. But she had bought all seven volumes with her own money, and since she'd bought the fabric for her own clothes out of the same funds, he could hardly complain too loudly about how she spent the rest of it. So the books came off the shelf next to her bed and were stacked beside the clothes. There was clearly too much here to take very far, and she didn't know how to start discarding. She tried to ignore the eyes fixed on her, pointing out that she had not answered the question.

"Hey," Shea said. "It's _us_, remember?"

It was not like her not to answer, and they all knew it. Out of the corner of her eye she saw a sharp, anxious glance pass between the two. She wanted to tell them something—tell Shea at least—but there was nothing she could find to say that wouldn't be worse than her silence.

Flick tried again. "I don't think you know anything about Allanon," he warned.

"More than you do!" she retorted. "Shea?" she pleaded. Invariably whenever they were teasing her, it was always Shea that made them stop.

"Let her alone. You're not getting anywhere. We'd better see how Father's doing anyway."

Flick agreed heartily with this latter suggestion and got up. Shea followed him into the hall, then paused.

"I know you're probably going to do whatever it is you think you have to. You always have. But do _think_ about it. And don't leave without saying good-bye," he admonished gently as he shut the door.

Andrea lowered her head, gasping, trying to fight back the painful confusion of feelings that seemed to push against her every way she turned, from within as well as without. _What had she done?_ She could not take it back—did not want to take it back, in truth. She wanted to stay with her father more than anything in the world. But if it were anything else in the world that could have prevented hurting Uncle Curzad... There were no answers and no way out of this maze she had set for herself. Even if she stayed at the inn now, as some pernicious Valegirl part of her conscience demanded—though the Druid girl had no intention of doing so—life could never be the same as before. But still the ache would not go away. She had made her choices and she would have to live with them. And so, she considered cheerlessly and without triumph, would everyone else.

Not willing to tarry any longer, she flipped quickly through the piles of clothing, casting articles aside—too small, patched too often, just plain ugly—she shoved the discards back into the trunk, then used the sleeves to tie what was left into a crude bundle with her books at the center. She wavered over the treasure box, but she knew it would be too unwieldy to carry, so a few spools of thread were pulled from the sewing box, and the few items she could not bear to part with squeezed in instead, before it went into the pocket opposite the one in which she still carried her mother's letters.

_The quilt?_ she thought, while her gaze raked around the room again. If she wrapped it around the bundle...but no. It was heavy and bulky, and there was no way she could take it, not with everything else. But at least she knew now where the dark patches that made up the night sky in the star pattern had come from. All this time... In spite of the grimness of this morning, she felt an incongruous giggle well up. This quilt, not made to any Vale pattern, had been the one thing out of her past she had possessed the whole time since she had come to the inn, and—even though it had to stay here, where she couldn't—it seemed to tie all the pieces of her life together. With a last, unwilling glance, she picked up her bundle. The thunk of the door as she pulled it closed behind her was, she thought, the most horribly final sound she had ever heard.

* * *

Shea and Flick were leaning guardedly against one of the circular tables; Allanon stood near the fireplace, and Curzad near the seat he had been previously occupying; but they were no longer the only ones in the common room. Andrea recognized the sturdy form and round, red face of the hamlet's only manifestation of the common law: the Justice, Jon Brocker. She felt a sudden surge of trepidation at the possibility that Curzad, bolstered by more support, was not going to let her step one foot outside the door of the inn. She looked anxiously at her father. 

"I'm ready," she said, with an uneasy glance at her foster uncle and the other men, and wondering what had occurred in her absence. The Justice was standing with his back still to the door, as if he had just come in.

"There you are at last, young lady." The overtly friendly timbre of Brocker's voice somehow made the implied indictment of her absence seem even more pronounced. "Had everyone pretty worried around here, you know."

Unless "around here" meant just the inn, not the whole village, she could not believe that. Or had Shady Vale been suffering from the shock of the idea that any Valeman, particularly a young woman, could simply vanish without a trace? She supposed that would have troubled people a bit. Another bubble of bitter amusement rose up in her—one of her childhood daydreams had involved everyone thinking she was dead. Then, in theory, everyone who had hated her was supposed to be sorry they had been so terrible to her, with the advantage that she was really still alive to hear them admit it. Of course, in her imagination she had never considered the impact on the people who really did care about her.

"I'm still worried," Curzad Ohmsford pointed out. Brocker nodded.

"I'd like to ask you some questions, Anne. Come sit down over here a moment, please." The Justice shifted a chair away from the nearest table for her. The sense of panic she had felt a moment ago welled up anew. Why wasn't her father doing anything about this? Her eyes sought him out, and without quite knowing if it would work—since the few times she'd answered her father's voice in her head, it had seemingly been inside her own mind and her reply had required nothing but to think it—she cast her thoughts toward him in desperation. _—Do I have to do this?_— she stared.

There was a faint change in Allanon's expression. His reply, however, came by way of a quiet, almost imperceptible nod. Andrea did not appreciate the feeling that she was being allowed to fend for herself. Didn't he care or realize what the Valemen were trying to do? Her temper flared, but between the uncertainty of exactly who she should turn it on, and the careful calm on her father's face—which was, it finally sank through, meant to be infectious—she took a deep breath and decided she had better be Cooperative.

Wedging the bundle between her boots and the chair legs, Andrea took the proffered seat. Her eyes went from face to face around her, trying to figure out what they were going to do, and with whom she stood the best chance of arguing her case.

"I don't see it, Curzad," the man said, his round, blue eyes flicking from Allanon to the girl and back.

Curzad scratched the back of his head, considering, "You didn't know Adrianne, did you? I guess she must have died before you came to the Vale."

"Only a little before, I think," Jon answered. "I remember you asking me about the house..." The man shot another glance at the dark stranger, then returned his attention to Andrea.

"It's rather remarkable," he said cheerfully, "for you to learn that your father is alive after all this time."

"Yes," she replied, trying to paste a proper meekness onto her expression, in the face of a comment she knew was full of doubt, and intended, however mildly, to be sarcastic. She would have liked to have said, _I knew it all along_, but she stopped herself. And really, she had been rather surprised at the outcome of her journey; her own shock at the realization of the truth had faded somewhat, but she'd had more time to become accustomed to the idea than they had.

"What I'd like to know, Jon," Curzad went on, as if resuming a previous portion of the conversation, "is: do I have any rights at all, as Anne's guardian?"

Andrea locked her hands on the seat of the chair to keep herself in it, and stared at her father to _make_ him pay attention to what was going on. Maddeningly, there was one word in his eyes: _wait_. She shuffled the pack between her feet. Why couldn't they simply believe her, or at least believe him, and let her go?

Jon shrugged faintly. "I don't see that you do, unless you can prove that he's not her father; and you've admitted to me outright the possibility that he is.

"Anne," Justice Brocker finally turned to her.

"My name is Andrea," the seething girl muttered, unwilling any longer to endure the use of her nickname, and the sense of belonging to the Vale that it implied.

Jon Brocker blinked, glancing up at Curzad. "We've been in the habit of calling you Anne so long..." He sank down opposite her in a chair, to put them at eye-level, and leaned over its arm. "Andrea, then. I'm not clear yet on everything that's happened here, so maybe you can explain some of it to me. To start with, maybe you could tell me: What led you to believe that this man," he gestured with a nod of his head, "is your father? Did he find you and tell you that?"

Andrea bit her lip silently. Her Senses about things, no matter how she tried to explain, would be considered foolishness by this man; she suspected that he already believed she had gone off her head a bit. She settled at last on a bare, unembellished truth. "We...ran into each other, and...I...I can't explain it very well. I just _knew_." _The way I always know things_, she thought; but no one else had brought that up—so maybe no one really remembered little things like that as much as Granny always said they would.

Brocker's sigh was the merest whisper of the outrushing of breath; he glanced up at Curzad again. "Maybe it would be easier," he pointed out, "if you just told us exactly what has happened to you since you left the inn "

There was no way she could tell that story—not without considerable omissions. Considerable enough that it would not feel at all like the truth. Her stomach knotted in queasy protest. A case could be made, maybe, that she was no longer answerable to these people, but her soul did not believe this. Lies were lies, no matter to whom. And if anyone deserved to hear as much of the truth as she was able to tell, it was Curzad Ohmsford. She looked at her foster uncle as she spoke. "I went to straight to Leah," she began, "just like I said I would, and nothing _at all_ happened on the way. But when I got to Leah, Shea and Flick had already gone off with Menion...on a hunting trip," she added, meeting Flick squarely in the eyes so he would know she didn't intend to sell them out. She didn't have to say _what_ they had been hunting; they could talk their own way into—or out of—trouble. "Since I didn't want to wait around for them, I was going come back to the Vale."

At this point she paused long enough that Brocker prompted her. "But you obviously didn't."

"No," she said haltingly. "I...I'm not sure why I did it. I thought..." here she flushed, "I thought since Shea and Flick weren't going to be back for a while, no one would worry if I...well, there was a trading caravan going north to Varfleet. And I thought: supposing my father was in the Borderlands?" She grimaced as Curzad shook his head. "I know I shouldn't have done that, but...I went with the Traders to Varfleet. I didn't plan on going any further. I really was going to come home. Then...

"I can't explain it, but...I just suddenly knew where to find my father." This was even more difficult to explain with any conviction, with that empty place inside her now where that compulsion had come from.

The older Valemen exchanged a brief, puzzled glance, and the innkeeper looked toward the Druid, as if he could find some way of construing duplicity in the man out of Andrea's peculiar statement. Flick and Shea shared a glimpse that spoke fathoms to the girl who knew as well as they did where that had turned out to be.

"And where was this? That you...ran into each other?"

"North of Varfleet," she prevaricated, grimacing inwardly. She glanced again at Allanon, but there was no help there; he seemed as interested as the Valemen—if not more so—in what she was going to say. She only hoped he would stop her before she said anything she shouldn't.

"How far north, exactly?" It must have been painfully obvious that she was hedging.

"I...don't want to say," she said finally.

"Is there some reason you shouldn't?" Jon did not seem impressed by her effort to avoid the question.

There was no way around it. Andrea braced herself, closed her eyes, and whispered in a very small voice, "The plains north of Paranor." Nothing short of being threatened with a map was going to make her actually _say_ that it had been clear up on the border of the Skull Kingdom. Though, she wondered, did either of the two older men really believe that the Skull Kingdom was anything more than a fable?

Curzad Ohmsford obviously believed enough about the dangers in that part of the world—Skull King or no—to need to sit down again, unable momentarily to say anything.

Jon cleared his throat. "That's...a long way from here."

"I know, "Andrea assured him.

Her examiner placed a finger to his bristly eyebrows. "You went all that way alone? And you just ran into this fellow out in the middle of nowhere? And you decided that he must be your father?" He sounded incredulous, and the impatience in his voice grew thicker with each question, as he gestured loosely.

"Well, more or less," she said. "I did go part of the way with Traders."

Curzad had found his voice at last. "Don't you know what kind of people live up in the borders? Robbers and brigands, Gnomes, Trolls, Rovers: cut-throats all of them. And then there's this matter of a war we've been hearing about. If you had been in the middle of that! What were you thinking of?"

Andrea was not sure what to say. "I was ok," she remarked hesitantly.

The Justice turned to Allanon. "And you have admitted," he said, "that the girl is your daughter? I hope, sir, that you did not allow this child simply to harangue you somehow into agreeing with her. If so, you've done her a great disservice. She has had a persistent hold on such notions for some time, and I think her judgment is not all clear on the matter."

Allanon straightened, no longer merely watching the proceedings. "What reason would I have to lie about the fact?" he inquired coldly. "I have already explained to Curzad Ohmsford my reasons for waiting so long to retrieve her from his care."

"Don't mistake me," Brocker said. "I am aware of your reputation as a teacher and philosopher; but I don't know you personally. My sole intention is to defend the girl's best interests. And as I understand it, however she managed it, it was she who found you. Were you, in fact, going to take responsibility for her at all, until then?"

Andrea could not help be impressed that Justice Brocker had deciphered this much from what little she'd managed to say. Though she did not especially want that question asked; she wasn't sure about the degree of truth that might be in the answer.

Allanon's face hardened. "That is no longer a pertinent issue at this point, I think. I have taken responsibility for her, and I intend to continue to do so. That should be enough for all of you." His glance went pointedly to the innkeeper, and the implication was plain that the Druid did not consider that this was any of the Justice's business.

Jon stood considering; he looked, too, to Curzad, who still appeared uncertain, then back at Allanon. Andrea watched anxiously, wondering what would happen if it came down to any kind of outright confrontation. Shea and Flick appeared nervous as well—between her and them, could they stop whatever might happen from happening? Or would they cast in their lot on the older Valemen's side?

"I don't suppose," the Justice said finally, addressing the tall figure, but including everyone in the room by implication of his sideward glance, "that there's any way of proving whether or not she is, in fact, your daughter? Outside of your word?"

The Druid's mouth bent sourly. "What do you expect beyond my own acknowledgment? It seems to me that the fact of anyone's parentage rests largely on the testimony of the individuals involved."

The Justice scowled, but any answer he might have made was cut off as everyone turned at the swish of the front door opening once more.

The old woman who came in challenged any traditional definition of elderly. Clearly she had more than sixty years to her credit, but she carried herself as if she had not decided yet to really believe it. Grey curls defied the pins with which she had snagged them into a knot at the back. She scanned the collected group briefly in the sharp-eyed way she had of saying she saw exactly what you were about, but her gaze rested longest on the wayward girl at the center of the commotion, then going finally to the dark stranger. An expression passed over her face that might have been surprise, but then again, it might not. The old woman's lips moved silently around a single word as her eyes saw something present only in memory.

Andrea saw one of her Flashes as she watched—or so she called it, when she imagined sharp and clear what another person had seen and done. It wasn't merely imagination, though for a long time she had told herself it must be—but this time it was blurred and gone before it solidified, leaving only a vague image of her mother in a time and place of which she had vague, dark memories herself. But as the word that had stood brightly, for a moment, on the surface of Granny's thoughts sank through the girl's confusion, it became a name, and Andrea wondered suddenly how Granny could possibly know the Druid.

The old woman's eyes came immediately back into focus, and she planted her hands on her hips.

"Well, it's about time!" she commented bluntly. But it was not Andrea she was pinning with her accusing gaze. The old woman was looking directly at Allanon.

**

* * *

A/N:** You've just met one of my favorite characters in the story. :) 


	15. Chapter 15

**Obligatory Disclaimer:** The world of Shannara and all the characters you recognize were created by Terry Brooks. Everything is my embellishment, and purely for fun.

**A/N:** I know it's been a long time since I updated. That's what happens when I don't get reviews! So if you want to see more of this story, you need to review. Got it?

Thanks to Crimson.Wish for reviewing. :)

* * *

**Granny**

"Granny!" Anne said, jumping up. The old midwife took the girl into her arms; she had wondered for some time whether she would ever have the chance to do so again, and she clasped the sturdy young frame to her intently. "It's good to see you again, child."

"I'm so glad to see you, too," Anne averred into her shoulder, her voice strained with more than the emotion of her greeting. Curzad and Jon had been grilling her, without doubt. Not that she didn't have her own questions for the girl. But she knew something about getting answers from the reticent, and it wasn't usually helpful to pounce on them, as the silly men had obviously been doing.

Granny released the girl from her embrace, holding her now at the length of her arms, looking her up and down, grateful beyond words that she was able to do so.

"I almost couldn't believe it for a minute when young Ceslee told me you were back." Her eyes darted to the tall stranger, pondering momentarily what the effect of that young-pup-of-a-young-lady's wild version of Anne's return would be. Granny hadn't had the heart to stop her; but the old woman wondered—though she could imagine all too well—how embellished that tale was going to become by nightfall.

She blinked and refocused her gaze, conning a pointblank assessment of the man, sifting her repertoire of rumor and report for facts that fit the truth of what she saw. Yes, the Druid was rather as forbidding as stories made him, she decided, particularly as he stood now, arms crossed, tensed, staring back at her with eyes that reflected the whole dark, towering aspect of him as he waited for her next words. Perhaps already knowing them, Granny reflected, but she refused to show her unease at that piercing gaze.

"So, I wasn't wrong," she stated resolutely. "Though I must admit I was pretty worried there for a while."

There was silence all around. Jon looked as if he were about to comment and stopped. It was only slowly dawning on the Valemen that her words were aimed primarily at Allanon.

Anne caught on very quickly, however.

"You knew!" the girl accused irately, bright spots on her cheeks rising. "All this time you knew, and you wouldn't tell me!" She pulled out of Granny's grip, her hands knotting at her sides, her shoulders stiffening. The green eyes sparked with anger.

"What was I supposed to tell you?" the old woman said with a deprecating shrug. "I didn't _know_ anything—not for certain—until this very moment." It was true; it had taken her years to piece together even that much of a possible solution to the mystery Adrianne had left behind with her orphaned daughter. "I admit I'd had my suspicions, but I wasn't going to share them with you, and then have Curzad blaming me because you went off to see if I was right. Not that it seems to have stopped you. I do wish," she added chidingly, "that you'd said something to me first."

"I didn't know..." the girl began in protest, but was cut off.

"Do you mean to say," Curzad had worked himself up into a fluster as well, "that you knew about all this before now? You might have told _me_ at least."

She might have, but he probably wouldn't have listened—not before Anne's disappearance anyway. She had been tempted, during this past long winter, to talk to him—to put his mind at ease when all their thoughts had been filled with the potentially unanswerable question: where was Anne? But she had not wanted to raise any false hopes in him based on her own shaky conjectures, so she'd held herself to nothing more than a vague assurance, only partially convincing, that Anne was a smart girl, able to look out for herself.

"Would you have believed me?" she asked, more to shut him up than in expectation of an answer. "Still," the innkeeper protested lamely, "I wish I'd had some idea..." he lapsed.

"Then you really do believe that he is her father?" Jon stated wonderingly.

"You don't?" Granny asked sharply. She turned back to the two truants, as if her eyes might have betrayed her earlier. "It's quite apparent to me." A certain angle in the line of the girl's chin, the square set of her shoulders, a kind of dark plainness and sturdiness that had remained ever at odds with the hint of her mother's ephemeral beauty. Beyond that, though, Granny saw and understood something that Curzad Ohmsford had probably refused to see. Nothing was about to separate these two, short of the dubious use of force that the Valemen, she realized now, had been contemplating when she came in.

Jon Brocker was sardonic. "I suppose I haven't the benefit of your superior wisdom."

"Probably not," Granny agreed. "Your problem, the both of you, is that you don't pay enough attention to the most basic things. Take your two boys for instance, Curzad." She gestured at the brothers, who snapped up warily in their observation.

"I suspect I've more notion than you do what these two were up to last summer. And not because I've heard so much more than you either, though maybe I ask more of the right questions. But I listen to everything, not just the things I think I ought to be hearing." Maybe she was being too hard on him, but after years of coping with the innkeeper's stubborn tendency to see things as _he_ chose, the midwife felt it satisfactory to observe the uncomfortable look he wore. People needed shaking up a bit every now and then, and the people of Shady Vale were worse for needing it than usual. Shea and Flick, though, were watching with mortal terror lest she tell their secrets outright. She was certainly capable of making a stab at it—the very fact that Adrianne had asked Curzad Ohmsford, and no one else, to be her daughter's guardian had taken on a new significance in the process of realizing what Shea might be, and what he might have been up to. But she'd thought all along, since the rumors about a Third Race War and vague mentions of the old stories about the Warlock Lord and the Sword of Shannara started coming through the Vale, that it was better if they told their father themselves. She wasn't sure why they hadn't yet; Curzad could be dense at times, and incredulous, but he had enough respect for his sons as grown men that he wasn't really going to doubt them if they told him the truth straight out. And sooner or later, someone passing through the inn would mention the half-Elven youth in a way the innkeeper wouldn't be able to ignore.

The Druid had been watching this interchange—she noted out of the corner of her eye—with continued wariness, and when she mentioned Shea and Flick, perhaps something of surprise.

"This problem," she stated, shifting attention. "This took me quite a bit longer to figure out."

"No one was intended to know," Allanon remarked pointedly, staring with ice in his eyes. Granny stared back, her flippancy chilling to dead seriousness. No, she thought, shakily bracing herself up, he was not anyone to mess with; she wondered if the Valemen realized that. Adrianne, though cast in the same metal, had been like intricate, delicate-looking wroughtwork; this man had edges like a honed sword. "What did Adrianne tell you?" he asked guardedly.

The matter-of-fact way that he spoke the name told her a good deal—more perhaps than even he realized. Sissy Melaton had not been a midwife for over 40 years without learning to discern some of the dim outward signals of things people keep hidden in their hearts. With one word, the man had closed a circle whose other half had encompassed the woman who had brought innocently into the Vale a girl-child whose father she simply would not name, not even to stem the tide of cruel rumor, not even to a friend.

"To do your Lady credit," Granny answered, "not much. It took a long time to piece together: some few things she said, and more that she didn't say." There were stories, too, that Sissy had heard over and over in her own youth, which—she had to admit—few other Valemen were likely to know. Stories from her own grandfather's childhood in a deep Southland once-kingdom, tales of petty but devastating wars and the men, good and evil who fought in them, and powers—oh, yes, powers that had been brought to bear. Stories that, believed from childhood, made other tales heard through her life different, other details more important. And those stories, when combined with particular things about Anne herself, and Adrianne...

"How long have you known?" Allanon insisted. "And who have you told?"

"No one, until now. And for certain? Not long enough." Granny shook her head. "Believe me, if I had known for certain earlier, I would have sent for you long before this time."

"That would have been extremely unwise." His voice was sharp. So this, the old woman determined, was where the girl had her incautious spurts of temper. Certainly they had not come from her carefully composed mother, or from the slow-roused growl of her guardian. "Or did you realize that as well?"

"You've left this too long—almost too long—you ought to know," Granny continued, daring, in her annoyance, to be blunt in the face of this simmering anger. "I've done what I can, but she's needed someone who understands things that I can only guess at."

"It was none of your business."

"It's had to be someone's," the midwife countered. "Adrianne knew what to keep hidden and why. But Anne doesn't realize, much as I've tried to make her see..." The girl had only a vague concept that some of the things she did without thinking were beyond the abilities of any of the Valemen. She caught his eyes going briefly toward the others at the same moment she glanced in that direction. Suspecting that the Druid did not care to have that particular subject aired openly—even in this limited company—any more than she did, Granny chose to drop the matter for now.

"At any rate," she went on before he could castigate further, "I _had_ hoped, last spring, when I'd heard you were by the inn, that everything was going to be settled at last. I would have talked to you then if I'd had the chance, but I didn't; then you were gone, though that didn't seem terribly strange, because Anne wasn't here."

She shook her head again. "What confused me again, was that Curzad said you'd been asking after Shea." Shea had been exceptionally close-mouthed about it, too. "Then, Anne was here and gone again, before I had a chance to say two words to her..."

The girl's mouth twitched ruefully.

"And Shea and Flick come back alone, not saying anything, and no one seems to know where Anne's got to. All I could do was to hope that you'd run into each other somewhere. And that I was right, after all."

Granny gripped the girl's forearm and jarred her lightly. "I wasn't sure," she said thickly, "that I'd ever see you again.

"What's the matter, Shea?" She cocked an eye at the youth.

"I just wish I had talked to you before. I wish I had known this before," Shea said. "It would have made a difference."

Curzad Ohmsford, although he gave a puzzled glance at his younger son's comments, had recovered from the browbeating Granny had given him enough to protest. "I can't believe you approve of this...this uproar."

"I approve of what's best for Anne. As I always have, Curzad; you know that."

"You do seem to be quite convinced of what that is," the justice noted, his expression still dubious. "I wish I had the benefit of your superior knowledge."

Granny furrowed her eyebrows at him. "What are you talking about, Jon?"

"I don't think that anyone here is not interested in what's best for the girl. You seem willing to vouch for the fact that Allanon is indeed her father, though you're not being very clear just how you came by the information." When Granny shrugged, he went on. "I just wish there were some more substantial evidence, that's all."

Curzad put in, bewildered, "I never had the least idea that anyone would come after her...that we weren't all the family she had."

Granny sighed faintly. "I thought you were aware of that much at least. I'm sure I heard Anne tell you any number of times. And the letters..."

"What letters?" Curzad said it, but it was on the tips of the tongues of nearly everyone in the room.

Granny addressed the young lady. "You didn't show your uncle the letters I gave you?" She hadn't expected that—so much so that she'd never asked about it before; though in considering it now, it didn't seem impossible—to the child, her mother's letters would have been a treasure she would not willingly risk anyone's disapproval of. And Anne had been old enough when Granny gave them to her to recognize the innkeeper's opinion on the matter.

Anne looked sheepish, but also hesitant. "I...I haven't shown them to anyone."

"Now might be a good time," Granny advised.

Casting guilty glances, not at Curzad, as the old woman would have expected, but at Allanon, Anne fished in her pocket and produced a small, worn packet bound with what had once been a velvet ribbon; the dark red strand had frayed thin in places, and the corners of the outermost sheet were rubbed off. The girl extended it uncertainly, then stopped and undid the impossible knot before delivering it gingerly into the hands she'd once received it from.

Granny took the packet and unfolded its pages. The paper had yellowed, but the clear, thin handwriting was unfaded. She passed the sheets to Curzad, who in some sense deserved to be the next to see them, as she thought he must have long since. Jon looked over his shoulder from one side, and Shea and Flick pressed close on the other.

"Adrianne clearly never intended that the girl stay here forever," Granny remarked as Curzad turned the pages over one by one and passed them to Brocker.

"I wish I had known all this." Curzad shook his head wearily.

"I'm sorry," Anne said, twisting her thumbs together. "I didn't think it would matter to anyone but me."

Granny looked around the circle, looked at the justice.

"I admit it does make a _few_ things a little clearer."

"Well then." Granny clasped her hands together soundlessly.

"I assume you find that adequate evidence?" Allanon's voice was taut, and the midwife wondered how much effort it took him not to snatch the letters from the Valeman's hands.

Curzad took the sheets back from Jon, and flipped through the pages again. "I suppose there wasn't much I could do about it in any case. But I'm going to miss you terribly, girl." Anne went unbidden to embrace her guardian and Granny noted tears on the girl's eyelashes; not as evident as the innkeeper's, but nonetheless there.

_I shall miss her, too_, the old woman thought, though she would avoid crying over it in public.

Finally Curzad let go. He refolded the sheaf of papers and pressed them into the girl's hand with a dissembling kind of smile. "Take care of yourself, Anne. And you take care of her, too," he warned the Druid.

"I shall." The big man extended a hand unexpectedly to the Valeman. "I owe you great deal more than you know, Curzad Ohmsford, and more than I can ever properly thank you for."

Curzad said, "I suppose I've done as much as any decent person would."

"I'm not sure, however," Allanon added, "that there needs to be such an outpouring of farewells, since we are not, I think, leaving at all."

"What?" Flick gasped, first of all of them.

"You seem to have overlooked the fact that the house, Adrianne's house, is also my house. And Andrea and I will be remaining here, for a time at least."

"You mean we...!" The beginnings of a protest distracted the midwife from her study of the Valeman's expressions—which ranged from puzzled to alarmed—and the protest came from Anne.

_Of course_, thought Granny. Neither the children of the Vale nor even their parents had made the girl's life here easy or pleasant. On the contrary, it was all too tempting to single her out for torment. Shea had never suffered as badly, despite his more obvious physical differences; but Anne, as seriously as she took things to heart, had also never been able to shrug things off or turn her back on the offenders. Now she was like a bird snared, just as it had thought itself escaped. Granny could almost see the flutter of wings in the girl's eyes. She _would not_ stay—not and be pecked at again. The old woman could not blame her, wondering what had prompted that unexpected decision; at least the girl had obviously not expected it.

Anne's eyes and Allanon's locked together, and Granny would have sworn the child literally bit her tongue, though her lips were pressed together in a tight line. _Neat trick, that_. She herself invariably had to listen to at least three or four more vehement words before even her harshest glare would shut the child up.

"Since that is settled," Allanon said, now addressing the little assemblage, "I'm sure that there are tasks we all need to attend to that are not served by standing here." She watched his dark eyes meet each of the Valemen, and finally herself. "There will be time enough for further discussions later." That there would be further discussions, Granny had no doubt.

With that the Druid swept his daughter out the front entrance of the inn, leaving four dazed men and one old woman—with a grin deepening her wrinkles—to watch the door resettle on its hinges.

* * *

**A/N:** Remember—reviews mean more chapters. 


	16. Chapter 16

**Obligatory Disclaimer:** I only do this for fun. Terry Brooks is the owner of the Shannara series.

**A/N:** Sorry I didn't get this out as soon as I wanted to. I was under the impression that there was a short chapter in between the last one and this one, but I can't find the file, and the hard copies are packed away where I can't get at them. Not a great deal lost, I think. And if it ever turns up, I'll post it.

Thanks again to Crimson.Wish and Shanna for their reviews!

* * *

**Fight**

True to the nature of the day—though it was not yet half over—Andrea found herself facing another set of confrontations. Or at least, potential ones. She was at the point, even, of taking her bucket to the stream behind the house. It was a clear, fresh-flowing brook, though later in the hot summer months, the Vale youth swam in the pond a little ways upstream, and Valewomen did laundry along the wide banks down by the shallow ford. Granny, however, had long since drummed into her young head the questionable wisdom of trusting water from lakes and streams too near to habitations.

Still, the fact remained that until the curious hand pump, ten years disused, which drew from their own well, was put into working order, they would need drinkable water. Under that necessity, Andrea trudged reluctantly toward the common well in the center of the village. She could have gotten what she needed closer—at the inn's own well—but at the moment, she would rather have gone all the way to the Northland again without _any_ water than walk back through those doors. Not today, not tomorrow: she was in self-chosen exile less than a quarter mile from her home—no, what had _once_ been her home. There had been another place she had called home before she went to live at the inn, and that place would be home again, now. It was dizzying.

It was not unlike that morning in Callahorn—as if she had been walking through a disordered dream and had only just realized, in a confused blink, that she was awake. For weeks and weeks, the everyday pattern of her life before she had left for Heartland had been fading into the distant nevermore, but now that she was in the Vale again, it was coming back, more easily than she wanted it to. It was disquieting. She would sooner sink back into the dream—comfortable, in its very strangeness—but at present, reality seemed utterly unwilling to oblige her.

_Why do we have to stay here anyway?_ she wondered crossly, not for the first time, as she plodded along, letting the wooden bucket bump loosely against her legs. The worst of her frustration over that was gone; the effort to call it up again would be a waste until she knew the why of it, and whether there was anything she could do about it. Her father had already made it clear that getting upset before she knew what was happening was the quickest route to not learning anything from him. She scuffed her boots a little harder on the road, and watched the familiar dun-colored dust float up around her feet.

The square was—almost miraculously, Andrea felt—empty. She came past the village meeting house on her left, onto the trampled common earth at the center of the Vale. As the only public building in the hamlet, it had also doubled as the school when there had still been a schoolmaster. There was no reason now, though, for anyone to be there at this time of day. Close by on the right, between the South Road and the Vale Road, was the justice's house, fronted in stone; she gave it a brief, wary glance, turning away quickly lest anyone inside happen to see her watching them. The opposite sides of the square were lined with small shops: baker, tailor, provisioner. It must be just at that point in the noon hour when everyone had left the day's tasks, and were now somewhere between making lunch and deciding it was time to get back to work. At least there was no one in sight. Andrea allowed herself an easy breath as she let the rope down into the narrow cavern of stone.

"So, you didn't fall off the edge of the world," someone behind her called. It _had_ been too good to be true. She knew the voice, and looked around in the precise direction to see a girl of her own age slipping away from the stone-fronted house. Jamie was a little more...filled out in the proper places, was how Granny would put it...but her pale oval face and the dusty blond hair coming loose from the braid in back were the same as ever.

Jamie Brocker. Andrea tried to work out a suitable reply.

"The world is round—you can't fall off," she heard herself saying, as she stared down into the deep water. She added scathingly, "Even _you_ should know that."

"It's just an expression," Jamie defended quickly. The justice's daughter was certainly bright enough among the other girls of their own age, but she had never been able to come up to the level of the wayward orphan in their studies—even the older students had trouble doing that. While Jamie usually pretended not to care, the implication was still resented. Andrea had struck where she knew the sting would hurt.

"I'm busy. Why don't you just go away," the Druid girl stated flatly. She did not want to listen to any more of the other girl trying to bait her.

Jamie slipped up to the opposite side of the well, leaning against the cover Andrea had pushed aside. "Is this all the punishment you get? Hauling water from down here? Ohmsford's letting you off way too easy. My father'd _kill_ me, if I'd done what you did, running off like that."

"Well, it's a good thing I don't have him for a father, then." Andrea hauled on the rope, trying not to acknowledge the other girl's presence any further by looking at her. The Valegirl bent across the well, forcing herself into the line of sight.

"At least I've got a father. Which is more than anyone can say about you!" Jamie had her turn at making a telling blow—but for once it went wide of the mark. It did not appear that Justice Brocker had discussed this morning's happenings with his household yet.

"Shows what you or anyone else knows." The drawing bucket reached the top. Andrea jerked it out of the water and balanced it on the stone lip. She sloshed a little water into her own bucket to rinse it out.

"Is that where you were?" The other girl straightened, moving out of the way, as Andrea tipped the dust-murked rinse water on the ground, then righted the bucket again. They had, at times, been something like good friends, close enough for Andrea to confide her dreams. But the friendship had been off and on...whenever Jamie wasn't succumbing to the lure of Ceslee's and Sadie's popularity. Of all the children near their own age, those two girls most hated the Ohmsfords' young charge, and if you wanted to be their friend, you didn't like her either. Andrea had more than once found herself the victim of vacillating loyalties. "Looking for your father again?"

"Mm-hmm," Andrea murmured smugly. "Found him, too."

"Oh, honestly! Now you're making up fibs," Jamie scoffed in open disbelief.

Finally Andrea looked up at the Valegirl. In spite of the present expression, the face was still basically amiable by default: a natural friendliness of countenance that needed very little beauty to improve it, and that nothing short of a blatant sneer could mar. She had wished sometimes that she were even as pretty as her friend. All at once it seemed important that Jamie Brocker believe her. So far, no one else today had.

"Go ask your father, he knows all about it. Or didn't your _pal_," she meant Ceslee, remembering something Granny had said, "tell you anything?"

Jamie's face creased into a frown. Probably, Andrea realized, she had slipped down in Ces's ever-changing hierarchy of confidantes. In a moment of regret, she wondered if Jamie had been trying to make up with her, after all, when she had approached. Distracted, the Druid girl poured her bucket full almost to overflowing.

"I was doing laundry all morning."

Andrea shrugged, feigning nonchalance. "Just go ask your father." The challenge to check things out with a grownup was, by tradition, nearly unassailable.

Jamie chose to opt out of it, for the moment at least, and her scornful doubt gave way to uneasy curiosity. "Ok," she asked, after a moment, "then what's your real last name?"

Another glib reply died on Andrea's lips.

"I...I don't know," she admitted, taken aback, worried that Jamie would take her wavering as a complete rout. She skimmed frantically over what Allanon had told her of the history of the Druids, but nothing helpful came immediately to mind. And she had never heard Allanon's name connected to any other. "Maybe...maybe I don't have one," she suggested lamely.

"Everybody's got a last name, dummy," Jamie took advantage of the opportunity to turn the insult around. If she had been trying to make up before, she certainly wasn't now. She leaned over the well again, and stated as nastily as possible, "The only name you've got is Ohmsford. And that's only because Curzad Ohmsford is incredibly nice to dumb orphans." She reached out and flipped the damp rope, and a small shower of spray hit her opponent.

"Quit it!" Andrea ordered testily. "And I'm not an orphan."

"Are you gonna make me, Anne Ohmsford?" She shook the line again; less water came off this time, but that was not a detail that seemed vital.

"It's not Anne Ohmsford!" The name she had worn for not quite as long as she could remember was beginning to sound like the worst kind of insult. She tried to grab the rope.

"Is, too." Jamie pulled it out of her reach. Daring, she flipped it again harder, so that it almost hit the darker girl.

"Stop it!" Andrea grabbed for the drawing bucket. Her original intention was to snag that end of the rope—then she saw and acted in one moment without having clearly thought or decided what to do. There wasn't a _lot_ of water left at the bottom—but what there was, she threw straight into the other girl's face.

"Oh-OH!" Jamie spluttered backing up, dripping. The water was very cold where it had spilled over Andrea's fingers, and she rubbed the back of her hand across her skirt.

"Don't call me names when _you_ can't even wash your own face!" Andrea blurted out, groping for some better last word, but not finding it. With that, she picked up her own bucket and, holding her head high as she passed stoutly by her wet and red-faced foe, she proceeded to walk away.

"It doesn't matter if you _ever_ find out who your real father is," Jamie declared briskly, whirling around, brushing the water out of her eyes, her hands stiff with anger. "You're still just a _bastard_!"

It was an awful word—one that should not have come off the well-bred lips of Jon and Amlin Brocker's daughter, one that would have earned her far more than an Ohmsford whack-with-a-willow-stick if her parents had heard it. But for Andrea it was one too many times that word, that _concept_, had been thrown in her face. She had still been very young the first time Shea's Uncle Marek had come to the inn, but when he'd told Curzad to send her to an orphan home, he'd used that word, and she had begun to understand the horrible, ugly meaning behind it. Among the Valefolk, even the few outside the little circle at the inn who _meant_ to be kind, that word had been taken for truth, even when it was not spoken aloud. She ought to have been used to it by now. But she wasn't. Because it..._was...not...true_.

Andrea didn't know whether she yelled aloud or not, or if it was Jamie's screaming she remembered afterward. But the last thing she saw was an instant of unbelieving surprise on the other's face, as, heedless of anything else, she charged at Jamie Brocker.

* * *

Andrea blinked. She had the Valegirl by the collar. 

"Stop! Stop! Please stop!" The dusty blond hair was pulled loose from the braid, and there was a long scratch welting up across the small, freckled nose and onto the cheek. The blue eyes were wild, panicked.

Of all the untoward things that had been happening to Andrea of late, this was somehow the most disconcerting. If she was going to win the only fistfight she'd ever had in her life, shouldn't she at least have the satisfaction of remembering doing it? Everything had just...disappeared...into that black flood of anger. Slowly she unlocked the fingers holding the other girl's rumpled clothes

Other things began to shift into awareness around her. One was Justice Brocker's face opposite, redder than usual. Another was a hold that was rapidly becoming painful around her upper arm. Glaring at Jamie, she shrugged it away, but a sharp voice speaking her name came with it.

Allanon spun her around abruptly, his dark eyes locking on hers.

"I didn't do anything!" she protested, before she had a chance to realize just how absurd that sounded with Jamie staggering, battered and disheveled, across from her. But no matter what she had done to Jamie, she had not done whatever horrible thing he was suspecting of her with his harsh gaze.

A sudden, sharp glance at the other girl must have told him something, because he let out a held breath, and his grip on her loosened slightly.

"Didn't do anything!" the Valeman spluttered. "I know you two can't stay friends from day to day, but do you have to try to tear each other apart in the middle of the street, I ask you?" Brocker's generally barely-to-be-heard Deep Southland brogue thickened in his anger. "Alright, then, who started this?"

"She did," Jamie said quickly.

"Is that true?" the Justice asked, sounding determined to get to the bottom of _something_ today.

Andrea wavered, for once not sure how to frame an explanation.

"Well?" Allanon added sharply, his fingers tightening subtly again on her arm.

"I started the fight," Andrea admitted, feeling very odd indeed. Granny had always told her never to fight if she could help it—she had enough problems without that, and a temper that would cause her grief if she let it. She was used to being on the receiving end of trouble, not causing it, and she searched rapidly for more familiar ground. "But she said..."

Jamie was looking at her, and their eyes met, as their eyes sometimes had when they were friends. _She ought to get in trouble_, Andrea argued to herself. But she also saw, and Felt, the desperate pleading in the other girl's gaze. If it had been anyone else...Ceslee or Sadie, she wouldn't have hesitated. But it wasn't; it was Jon Brocker's daughter. And Andrea, unfortunately, knew what that meant, and what the truth would cost Jamie.

"What did she say?" Jon fixed his own daughter in his glare now. _She shouldn't have said it!_ the Druid girl thought coldly. "She said I was..." Andrea realized that she did not, in any case, want to repeat that word aloud. "Just something rude," she finished. But she was not willing to take all the blame either. "She said I was lying."

"Did you say that?" Jamie's father wanted to know.

With unspoken gratitude, Jamie unwillingly returned the favor. "Well...I thought she was making it up..." Andrea saw the other's eyes go past her, and there was white nearly all the way around the blue.

"Yes, well there's a lot of that going around today," Jon mumbled. He addressed the other man. "Let's deal with this separately."

"Agreed," Allanon said, with an undertone in his voice that chilled the breath in her lungs, and sank like a rock to the pit of her stomach. Brocker's final glance held disgust—it was not like Anne to behave this way, not at all.

* * *

The Brockers' door closed on Jamie's protests to her parents, contributed to by her brother's assertion that she had already been "whipped good." Before she had a chance to hear more, Andrea was being marched down the South Road at an uncomfortable pace, under the observation of several Valemen who had stepped out of their shops to see what was going on. When they were out of earshot of the square, Allanon turned, loosening his grip on her arm just enough to spin her about to face him. "You _had_ to start a fight with Brocker's daughter?" he questioned angrily. 

Andrea cringed. "I just..."

"This is not the way I intended to begin here. Brocker's daughter, of all people... "

"But she said..." Andrea interrupted, as angry remembrance brought the first few words to her lips, but she stopped; she couldn't say it aloud, even now. She did not even want to think it, but the words came to her mind without her volition. _She called me a bastard._

Her father stared at her oddly, and long enough for her to wonder what he was thinking, but somehow that rush of blackness earlier was catching up with her, and it made that part of her mind dull and numb, as if she hadn't the strength to reach out to know things. Finally, he released her arm and said, "You didn't tell. Why?"

"If Jamie's father knew she'd said _that_? He'd beat her." She couldn't conceal a faint twinge. Jamie would likely get it even yet. Uncle Curzad believed there were better ways to manage older children; Andrea herself had not felt the thin end of willow stick since she was eight or nine years old. But some of the beatings the Brocker children got—beatings with a strap—were whispered about uneasily by the other Vale youth in huddled conversations behind the school; Andrea, between her past friendship with Jamie and the Senses that imposed themselves uncomfortably on her at times, had known more about that than she had ever heard from, or told to, anyone.

It occurred to her, as she watched the still-present anger in her own father's eyes, that she might very well be facing a similar punishment to the one she had just so glibly described. The enormity that she had actually been in a _fight_ was slowly dawning. She didn't care to try it again anytime soon, and she was certain that once her heart stopped pounding so fast, she would be even sorrier for it than she was already. But she had not considered that her father might have very different ideas about discipline than Curzad Ohmsford did.

"So, you took the blame?" Allanon said bluntly.

"We were friends, once. I couldn't let her get in that much trouble." Andrea suspected that when the justice did get around to punishing his daughter, she would know it, Feel it herself. She was still mad at Jamie, but something of the old bond of friendship had come back in that moment when the other girl looked in her eyes, and she would not soon shake it—not with knowing that it was, in a sense, her fault. _She shouldn't have said it_, Andrea thought again, trying to brace herself against it. She asked hesitantly, "How much trouble am _I_ in?"

"I haven't decided yet. Enough. More than enough. If you weren't a girl..."

Unexpectedly Andrea sensed a coup. "If I was boy, you wouldn't punish me for fighting to defend my mother's honor, " she pointed out.

"If you were a boy!—is that going to be your excuse, every time you...?" he sighed. "You're right." A low chuckle welled up from somewhere, surprising her, as he shook his head, and ran a hand back through his dark hair. "Oh, child," he said, looking at her as if he were seeing her for the first time. "You are not at all what I was expecting."

"You're a fine one to say that," she shot back at him. They stared at each other, and Andrea felt her mouth form a matching, involuntary grin.

At last her father's smile relaxed into a serious expression. "Something must be done, however, to allow Jon Brocker to save face. So you will apologize to the girl. Is that clear?"

Andrea nodded. The prospect did not enthuse her, but her anger was already dissipating, leaving her with the burden of guilt, despite the other girl's part in their quarrel. She was cold inside and growing colder with the memory of what had happened.

"What...what were you thinking I had done?" she asked, as they made their way along the road.

Allanon was silent for too long, and she looked up uneasily, unsure if he was going to answer at all.

"You have, I think, the empathic gift. I'm uncertain of all that you might be able to do, yet. One thing I do know—your anger was strong enough to cause harm. And empaths seem to have more innate ability to do that kind of harm."

"Harm?" Andrea asked, and discovered she was trembling, the same as in that moment after the blackness faded.

"An empath can, sometimes, break another's mind." She could hear the hesitation in his voice.

"But I didn't? Did I?"

"No." He shook his head.

"Everything...went dark," she whispered.

"I know. I know that kind of anger, Andrea—the kind of anger it takes to kill."

_Not Jamie_..."But I didn't want to...I wasn't trying to..." Yet she had been that angry—not at Jamie, exactly, but at all the injustices she had ever suffered, bound up in that one moment.

"No. But the possibility, however remote, existed. Do you understand that?"

"I don't want to do that." She was shaking visibly now, though she tried to hold her limbs still.

"You may or may not have the power."

"How... Can you find out?"

"There are certain things that require both sufficient cause and will to accomplish that can never be tested—only done, or not done." She could sense him studying her, weighing anew her character, and she dared not follow that gaze inward, terrified of what she might find in herself. There was nothing frightening reflected back in his eyes. "But I can find the range of your abilities, yes. I had intended to do so in the near future, in any case."

"Today," she said.

"That is something that takes time."

"Then _start_ today."

—It had been a long day already, and would be longer still. Tomorrow would be better to begin.—

_—But I need to know_.—

"We will find some time today to begin. But later. We have a great deal else to do. Now, let's go home." The hand he put on her shoulder was firmer than usual. "This is not the place for speaking of such things." They had come level with the inn.

"The water!" Andrea said instantly. "I forgot."

Allanon paused, as if in doubt, but he gestured shortly. "Be quick about it. There's something else to be taken care of, and soon."

* * *

**A/N:** The physical description of the fight is very much like what happened to me in the fifth grade. I blacked out when I attacked, only coming to my senses when I heard my opponent screaming for mercy. Quite frightening. 

Remember that reviews mean more chapters posted...


	17. Chapter 17

**Obligatory Disclaimer:** The characters and places that I've co-opted for this story belong to Terry Brooks, although I suspect he'd hardly recognize them by now.

**A/N:** I must apologize for letting this story sit for so long without adding to it. We moved in April, and life has been crazy ever since. I want to thank Shanna, Crimson.Wish, SthrnGrl, foxgrin and serrin verres for reviewing the last chapter.

The cooking scene in this chapter is a tribute to my own father, one of the best cooks I ever knew.

**

* * *

Home**

The path Andrea had worn through the woods behind the house was not quite overgrown. It would have been this summer, if she had not come back. No one else had reason to come this way.

There was not much in bloom yet in the tiny meadow between the back of the house and verges of the forest, and most of it was yellow—daffodils and forsythia. She broke a few thin branches off the bushes, then plucked the cup-shaped blossoms, one here, one there, not always the most perfect, but those that suited her. It was a long-established ritual that no other person's presence could disrupt completely, and her father, following close behind, did not attempt to hinder her in any way, even by suggestion.

Her own private path ran into the network of ways the Vale children used. She knew them all: this one to the pond, another to a dark, cool spot for fishing; and where they lead from: the houses on this side of the Vale, and the two paths from behind the school. One led the long way round, always taken if it were anywhere near dark, so as to leave a wide border of woods between the hapless traveler and the unchancy clearing that the other, straighter path lead directly along the edge of.

Even Andrea had felt a bit of a chill on a few occasions, caught in that part of the woods alone with dusk coming on quicker than she had paid attention to. Fear of the dead was not entirely to be shrugged off after dark, even if one's own mother was among them. It was not dark now, however—the sun was barely slanting into afternoon.

The carpet of decaying white-brown leaves was still springy underfoot after the winter, a cushion that resisted their sinking weight, but once flattened did not rise completely again. The new grass poked through, batting now and again at their shins. The footing was uneven here between the sunken earth of older burials and the mounds of the newer. Here and there a wooden slab driven into the ground proclaimed a name, where it was still visible; many of these were no longer even upright, leaving the occupants of those graves unknown and unmourned. A few of these, however, had distinctively arranged piles of stones at their heads; although there was no stonecutter in the Vale to carve so much as an initial, the living had found ways to mark more permanently where their kin were buried. A few besides herself made regular pilgrimage here.

Andrea had set a half circle of river stones in an arch behind the greying board into which the blacksmith had burned a name: one name, almost worn away now by ten years of sun and rain and snow—Adrianne. The girl bent and placed the rough bouquet carefully.

The all-gone feeling was still there. Even here. Her mother had died ten years ago, yet she had never felt so very, very absent as now.

"I miss her so much," she murmured. Lost in a vigil she was accustomed to keeping alone, the words tumbled out before she remembered that, for the first time in her life, this spot of ground had meaning for someone else.

"So do I."

Grieving ought to be private, she thought, but there was no way to make it so, not now. If she could, she would have turned around and gone back to the house, but her feet would not obey her. She wanted to sink to her knees and cry, as she had many times before now in this place. Yet the steadiness of her father's presence kept her on her feet; no tears, not now, while he said nothing, did nothing—was it because of _her_ presence?—while the sense of pain poured into her heart. It was different than her own sorrow, yet like it, too. But the soul ache combined was too much to contain, and too strong to back away from.

Her father took her hand quietly. And for a moment that was much, much worse, then abruptly it ebbed. She found herself reaching out into the space it left, fearful that he was gone from her altogether. But the connection that said, _I'm here_, was still there, and she took a sharp breath in relief.

_— That...wasn't quite fair, was it?— _His thought was rueful and still tinged with the hurt.

_—No. I'm sorry.—_

_—For what?— _Surprise and a faint touch of good humor, unexpected in the midst of all this grief.

_—I...I should have gone.—_

_—No. There will be other times. And this is sorrow for both of us.— _The thought was heart comfort, that neither of them was alone, in sorrow or in thought. It gave her the strength she had not had a moment before to keep her own counsel.

She slipped her hand loose of her father's clasp. Past Shea's mother's grave, past Endrin Melaton's, a little farther distant, past the trees that seemed suddenly to loom like a wall trying to hold her back, she went, all the way back to the house.

Granny was coming up to the front door, and Andrea, spying her, ran around the side of the house to meet her. Granny wasn't a steadying force in the same way Uncle Curzad was, for the old woman had a tendency to throw her off-balance with unexpected calls to thought, but she was a cheerful presence, even when Andrea didn't care to be cheered. At the moment, it was just the medicine she wanted.

"Brought you a bite—didn't want you starving," the old woman said, holding out a covered basket. Andrea took it and peeped inside, worried that Granny might short herself to feed them. She found eggs, a loaf of bread, a small cloth-wrapped bundle that smelled like butter, and a flask of milk.

"Are you going to starve yourself?" Andrea asked reproachfully.

"Not a bit of it. Mellis Sloan had her baby yesterday. Paid me in foodstuffs today, and it'll half go bad before I eat it all. As well someone should have the good of it."

Andrea pursed her lips, knowing the bread, at least, had not come from the Sloans. But she threw her arms gratefully around the old woman. "Thank you."

"It'll get you fed into tomorrow." Granny patted her arm. "I mean to come speak to your father soon enough. But everyone's nerves'll need a bit more settling for that. Goodness, girl, but I _am_ glad to see you."

They talked for a minute more, Granny giving her small news of the doings of the Vale that the girl cared more to hear than she would have supposed. Finally the midwife gathered herself.

"I know you're busy. I'd offer my help but..."

"This is enough, Granny," she protested, holding the basket.

"...my hands are going a bit stiff for that much scrubbing. So I'll let your young bones deal with it. You'll manage housekeeping well enough, I dare say, if you put that mind of yours to it. I'll see you tomorrow at earliest." And upon that, she left.

A generalized impatience, with no source she could trace, sent Andrea inside before Granny had got quite to the road. Unless it was linked, perhaps, to irritation at the old woman—at the unspoken implication that the girl might do alright, _if_, mind you, _if_ she could stop being so flighty. As if sewing didn't take concentration. It was better than housework, that was all. Humph! She would show what she could manage! She heard the back door open and close as she went into the front hall, and took the basket into the kitchen.

"Granny brought something for us to eat," she said. There was only the faintest shadow—like an afterimage of sun on metal—in her father's eyes, then it was gone, as if it had only been moment of weariness.

He took the cover off and looked inside. "Excellent. What can you cook?"

"Well...not much, really," she admitted, reluctant to say so, but reluctant to pretend to a skill she didn't have. "I can fry the eggs, I suppose." She imagined oogly whites with blackened edges and broken yolks, and grimaced. "Granny taught me...tried to teach me...but I never really..."

"No better time to learn." In less than a minute he got a firegoing in the cookstove. "Necessity breeds invention. My father and I would have lived on charity meals and lumpy porridge if I hadn't learned to manage. Get that shallow bowl from the cupboard, the one with red flowers painted on the bottom."

She reached up into the cupboard and took it down, dusted it, and watched. Her father had another rag and a rusty iron pan. A swipe with the rag, a bit of the butter, a few more swipes with the rag, then he left the pan sitting on the stovetop.

"Now. We are going to have more of a treat than fate ought to have brought us. Crack two eggs into that dish and whip them."

More dust and grime, to clean off the utensils. But here was a spoon, and the eggs became a pale yellow froth. "Is that enough?"

"Mmm." He was cutting thin slices of bread. "Now some milk." He nodded as the mixture went even paler. "Good. Bring that to the stove."

More butter went into the pan, sizzling. "Then...dip the bread into that. Both sides. Let it soak in, but not until it's soggy. There." A slice of the milk-and-egg-soaked bread went into the brown-tinged melted butter, and a wonderful warm smell spread through the kitchen. "Plates!" She got them down, painted with delicate flowers like the bowl; she had eaten from them when she was very small. It sent a funny shiver down her back, but a pleasant one—the twinge of good things remembered that had been forgotten. She had not realized how much she _had_ forgotten, until they got into the house. The only thing truly different, besides the dust, was that everything seemed smaller than it had long ago, the distance across the front room not so vast, the stairs not so long, the tables at a reasonable height, rather than just below her chin. Only the ceilings were still high above her head, and since they were festooned with cobwebs, she was glad for the distance. They would be dusting for a week. But it was home...home, and she felt her soul sink into it as she looked around, as they sat across the little table in the kitchen and ate the browned slices—crisp, with insides like custard.

"Mmm...this _is_ good," she averred.

"Better with some sweetening, but we couldn't manage that yet. Your Granny must have made a thorough job of cleaning everything out of storage." She remembered breakfast at the Keep, and guessed that this wasn't the usual state of things; she was learning to discern that faint hint of annoyance in her father's voice.

"At least there's no bugs."

He chuckled again quietly. "At least there is that."

They left the dishes on the counter until the pump was mended, and went back to work. Dust, dust and more dust. Dust in the linens, dust on the floors and the doorknobs. Dust on the windowpanes. Andrea hauled buckets and buckets of water from the stream for scrubbing—until, partway through the afternoon, her father got the pump in order; then she hauled them from the kitchen—and emptied buckets and buckets of dark grey water off the side of the back porch. She shook out sheets and quilts, which would have to all be washed at some point, though airing would have to do for now; and when the one remaining rotted clothesline broke under the weight, she spread the linens on the not-quite-tall-enough grass.

By the time they had their supper of bread and butter, in the last dregs of light through the kitchen windows, the chimney had been unstopped, and a fire built in the front room fireplace to ward off the evening chill. Andrea had torn two sheets into rags—a grimy pile of cloth that waited in a bucket to be washed tomorrow. But most of the things in the main rooms that they might sit on or have to touch had been made clean enough to do so. The kind of chores she normally hated had flown by almost cheerfully, as she and her father dodged around each other, dividing work automatically, scarcely requiring any words. There was much more to do—they hadn't half begun; but the house was livable, if not up to her mother's, or even any Valewomen's, standards of housekeeping. The milk and butter were stowed downcellar—that abode of spiders, where she dark thoughts toward the eight-legged denizens whose homes she had to duck past unhappily, and from whence she got out as soon as she could. The floor was as swept as one old mouse-eaten broom could make it. The dinner dishes were done and put in the cupboard. Granny's doubts notwithstanding, Andrea discovered that she was quite contented with housekeeping...in her own house.

She had left her trip to the cellar for the last thing, bearing a saucer that held the dancing glow of one of the candle-stubs they'd found earlier, and when she came back upstairs the kitchen was dark; she roamed down the hall and found her father sitting in the front room, studying the air thoughtfully in the light of the fire.

"Sit down." Allanon pulled a carved armchair around to face the sofa. Andrea put the candle on the mantel. He had been right: it had been a long day; she had almost forgotten what she had asked of him, and now she was almost too tired to try to imagine what this test of her abilities might consist of. She wasn't prepared, though, to beg off—she didn't know how long it might be before she would have another chance to find out. Curiosity prickled, putting exhaustion temporarily to flight. She sank down in the chair opposite him.

Without further prelude he began. "There are certain things I know you are capable of...have observed you doing. But I'm not entirely sure that you are aware of all of them." He caught her eye and held it. "I believe that no other child of the Druids has ever grown up untrained, not knowing what their gifts are. That, I admit, is my fault. But now I need you to tell me what you _are_ aware of. Some may be things that you take for granted, that come to you as easily as breathing. But you must know by now that they are things no Valechild could ever do."

Anxiety of memory accused her, and she gripped the arms of the chair, the carvings in the wood biting into her finger. She was not Valefolk—had never been one of them, she realized; she had never thought she wanted to be, not in the sense that they expected her to be, nor wished away her strangeness in order to fit in. Yet she _had_ wanted to fit in. She had never thought that it was anything she could control that made her an outcast. It was _their_ fault, not hers.

"It isn't easy to explain in words," she whispered.

"I know, and we'll get beyond that eventually; but for now, try."

"I know people's feelings," she said at last, oddly uncomfortable speaking of it so plainly. "And the strongest ones carry thoughts. But I can usually block them out."

"The feelings or the thoughts?"

"Both...I think. The thoughts are easier to block. A lot of times," she tried to find a way to explain something she had only just realized, "I just...close up and let it wash over me, until it goes away. But...sometimes I _want_ to know," she admitted guiltily. "And sometimes I can't seem to let go of knowing, even when it's awful."

"Is it physical pain? Or just emotions?"

"I...I'm not sure." She thought of Jamie. But she also thought of Medge Carder and Keelan Barthel; she had never exactly _felt_ the pain of birthing. Nor did she have any kind of emotional connection to those women, apart from them being women. But when Lora Marsh lost her baby... Andrea winced. "Emotions, I think." Was there a way to explain that it _did_ hurt, as real as jabbing herself with a needle, but not as...she couldn't find a word...immediate, maybe, immediate to the flesh.

"Do you ever hear thoughts _without_ emotions attached?"

"If people _think_ loud. But they don't do it on purpose, the way you do."

_—The way I do?_— The thought was tinged with bemusement.

_—Yes.— _And blinked.The transition from speech to flow of thought never seemed abrupt until it occurred to her that it was already happening, had happened words or whole sentences ago.

"How did Melaton find out?" That was aloud again.

And abrupt. "I...sometimes I'd answer her, when she hadn't said anything." It still made a knot in her stomach: the look on Granny's face, and the realization, for the first time consciously, that what she did was something the Valemen couldn't, or didn't. "She made me promise to be sure I'd heard with my ears before I opened my mouth. She said it would scare people if I went around doing that." Even so, it was hard to pretend she didn't know what people were thinking when she _did_ know.

"How old were you the first time it happened?"

"Nine. I think I _knew_ things before then, but it was the first time _that_ happened, that I know of for certain." What she knew now made it easy to forget how much she had _not_ known then. "I didn't know it wasn't normal for everyone." Her father's hesitations worried her. "_Is_ it normal? For a Druid, I mean?"

"Thus far, yes," he reassured her. "Not all Druids have the empathic element, though I anticipate it would be hard for you to imagine _not_ having it. But the rest—all those abilities that have to do with thoughts—are the Druid gifts. Yours are still rough, in many ways. But I noticed today that you _can_ project your thoughts directly, rather than simply broadcasting them at large."

He meant when she had tried to think _to_ him, at the inn. "Today was the first time I ever did that," she protested. "The first time I ever tried."

"But you managed it. You can also shield—what you call blocking—better than I would have expected. But as an empath, I think you would have had to learn it for yourself. Unless...somehow your mother taught you..." _And how possible was that?_

_—I was so little...—_

—_I suspect...something.— _He closed off the thought. "When my father was lost, fighting the Warlock Lord in the last battle of the Second War of the Races, part of his final spell was a binding. To me. Until the Warlock Lord was destroyed. That binding allowed him to do certain things: among them, to speak to me through the thin places between the worlds of living and dead. But a requirement of that was that he could not truly rest, not truly die, until that condition he set had been fulfilled.

"I believe it is possible that your mother did the same to you. It does not strictly require magic, only a strong enough will, and I know she had that. I only wonder now, has that condition, whatever it was, been fulfilled...?"

It was still an ache, a space inside that could never be filled up. But suddenly it seemed possible for them to speak as easily of her mother as if she were still alive, which it had not been until now. The hole made by her absence in their lives was in some way also a presence, a might-have-been powerful enough to allow the family she had constructed to go on, to live with the unavoidable truth of her death.

"Yes, it has." Andrea took the knowledge on faith, not sure how she knew, unless it was because she understood, finally, why her mother was no longer just out of reach, watching. But she also believed that, beyond her own ability to perceive it, her mother was watching her still. "I think she only meant for us to find each other."

He nodded, believing her, she sensed, because that was better than anything else he might believe, and for a better reason, and grateful that she knew it. "There is one thing I wonder, however. Your mother did not know magic as I do, beyond her own Druid gifts—empathic, like your own. But when you told me how you found me, you said that you could locate others the same way."

"I can." _As easily as breathing_, he had said. It was not quite that easy, but... Andrea reached outward. She could feel the directional pull, so that she could have turned and pointed, and also—distinct and separate—the image forming, because she knew the place. "Shea...he's on his way home to the inn," she said. "He's just there on the road, coming from the village." She looked expectantly at her father.

"Andrea," he said slowly, "I will tell you something: I could not do that without training; without using magic, in fact."

The pause seemed very long. "What does it mean?" It seemed as if she ought to be afraid—that she could do something by instinct that her father could only do through magic. But something so simple, something she had_ always_ done, could not seem threatening.

"That Idris was right," he remarked cryptically. "Magic...strengthens magic. In the days of the Council, the Druids did not believe their gifts were magic, any more than you see that instinct as magic. Any more than they chose to believe that the Druid Sleep was something beyond chemistry."

Another flare of irritation, even anger. Not at her. She was picking up quickly on which subjects were likely to cause it, and the Druid Council was one, at times at least.

"Don't let it trouble you," he said, reaching out and placing his hands on her shoulders. "That's enough for tonight. Go on upstairs. There'll be another busy day tomorrow, and the day after that. And the day after that. You need your rest. Go on."

Reluctantly, she went, with questions she knew she would not get answers for, and with his kiss on her forehead..._for protection_...she felt the thought, distant somehow, as if he were remembering something else. Her own room had a real dresser, with drawers, and real glass mirror on the wall over it; but in the candle's glow there was no shining mark on her forehead, as she had almost expected there to be.

This was her own room, and when she was small she had knelt here by the bed and whispered her prayers each night at her mother's prompting. She blew out the candle and went to her knees. The simple, childish rhyme came to her lips, her gratitude pouring out in the only way she knew how. She had never said her prayers at the Ohmsfords', and now she listened to her lips make the same prayer she had once made into her mother's lap, memory only a breath ahead of the words. "God bless Mother," _she's with you now_, she added in thought. "And God bless Father, and keep him safe..." she couldn't finish the sentence as she had said it then..._while he's far away from us._

_I knew. I did know! _And she could now remember the very last time she had said that prayer. It was not before her mother died, it was after. She could see Curzad Ohmsford sitting uneasily on the end of her bed at the inn, saying: _we're the only family you have now, Anne. _And she had argued_; no, _she insisted_, my father's going to come and get me. _And that was the last time she had said her prayers under the Ohmsfords' roof.

_I knew all the time. Not just Knowing it. I really knew, in a plain old ordinary way—because my mother had told me. _It was impossible to say why, after everything else that had happened today, this tiny thing was too much to bear; but she threw herself into bed, and the tears she had held back all day poured out. She buried her face in the pillow and shook from head to foot, until finally she had no more strength left, even for crying, and a moment later, she was asleep.

**

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A/N:** Here's to memory...and I hope mine will hold up so I can remember to update this sooner. Thanks for reading! 


	18. Chapter 18

**Obligatory Disclaimer:** This little take on the original Shannara book is not intended for gain or to produce any diminishment of Terry Brooks' copyright. One would hope that creating a nine-book epic to tie the Word/Void series to the Shannara series would keep the man and his lawyers busy enough not to pester poor fan-fic writers like me. 

**A/N:** Many thanks to Shanna and serrin verres for reviewing the last chapter, and to all those who have been reading. Here's another short little chapter for those of you who love Allanon's POV as much as I do.

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Adrianne**

Allanon sat for a long time, watching the flicker of light and shadow cast over the room by the fire on the hearth. Watching the jumping, shifting shapes of all the things Adrianne had gathered into this room.

That had been a better time, when he had allowed, briefly, such things to be important to him as well. He and Ker had set the heaviest pieces into place—she had known exactly where she wanted everything; they didn't have to move it twice. How long, he thought, had she constructed this place in her dreams, its every detail formed until she had only to point and it would be so?

It had weathered the years well, thus far. Every stone, every timber still in place, after a hundred years. That was more than it seemed possible to expect; he and Ker had wrought well. Too many things failed to outlast even a portion of a Druid's life. But this: that it should remain... There were repairs, of course, but they were minor. This house had remained—would remain, he let himself believe finally—a fixed point of reference, more inviting than the Keep. Perhaps he had not been able to imagine it surviving Adrianne's death; it was her dreams that had slaked the mortar and pinned the joints. Yet she had passed that dream to their daughter; Allanon had seen it in the way the girl looked around her, her eyes owning everything that her memory touched. The house was more truly hers than it could ever be his, though very likely she did not see it that way. No...in truth, the house was still Adrianne's, even beyond death, and in some strange twist of fate, it was her will, in the end, that had brought them back.

He waited to go up until well after he knew that Andrea was asleep. She had needed the tears, and his footstep on the stairs might have been enough to stop that catharsis. She was still trying, beyond reason, to be everything a son might have been, to show a strength that he would not have demanded of her. But a strength she needed nonetheless. So very young for the burdens she had borne today—and every day now, he thought regretfully, since they had met. No, he reminded himself, she had carried the burden of the binding Adrianne had placed on her for longer than that, younger than that. Was her childhood so unlike his own?

But he would _not_ be what his own father had been, requiring, on the one hand, responsibilities beyond his son's years, but refusing, on the other, the privileges earned thereby. He had learned the small magics his father taught him—better at it, in truth, than any of the older men Bremen had assembled together from the exiled Druids, determined to teach them what he could, to give as much advantage to their side as possible against the Warlock Lord's strike that was sure to come. But in the end, Bremen had refused to allow the young man to use magic on that fateful day, had made him swear a promise not do so. Perhaps that had been foresight, for in battle, those who had attempted to use the magic Bremen had taught them had become targets for the Skullbearers—easy targets, proving that a little knowledge was more dangerous, sometimes, than none at all. But it had rankled for a long, long time, festered by doubt, by the possibility that if he had broken his promise he might somehow have done something to save his father.

_Small magics_, he pondered, as he closed the door to his room. Had that magic held? He touched the edge of the chest of drawers—it was still charged. Adrianne had asked him for that, the small stasis that held out air and insects at the least, perhaps even time itself.

He slid open the bottom drawer, felt the sigh of released power as the two chips of Stone that held the spell separated. It was still there, under the heavy pullovers, at the bottom of the drawer, a flat, rectangular package; he unfolded the heavy paper from around it. Reaching out in the dim candlelight, he found the nail in the wall over the dresser, and put the picture in place.

There had been a pair of these, once, but he had no recollection of where Adrianne had stowed the other, and little inclination to see the youthful face it portrayed. The portraits had been Bremen's wedding gift to them—it had been too long since he had painted, the old man had decided in the midst of his machinations, and he had made them sit while he transferred their likenesses to canvas, greater enjoyment for himself than for the young couple. Only gratitude at its present existence could take the sting from the memory, or let him believe that his father had meant well, however self-serving the gift.

_Had they ever been so very young?_ But it was not truly the face of a girl, barely older than their daughter was now, that Allanon saw as he stared at the portrait. She had been beautiful then, yes, but she had grown more lovely through the years, as time and sorrow had deepened the wisdom in her eyes and made her smile more poignant, details that his mind superimposed, seeing her as he had last seen her, with only the gem-green eyes as a referent. She had been wiser, in her own way, than he was, even then. And it was her wisdom he needed most now.

He knew nothing of raising a child, least of all this tomboy-girl. His own time-worn plans—how he had intended to raise the son he believed he would someday have—did not apply, whatever Andrea believed. If Adrianne had had the chance to bring her up altogether, he thought, perhaps she would have been more like her mother—the delicate girl-child he had imagined on those rare occasions he had let his thoughts drift to the daughter he had left behind. But no, he revised that assessment: Adrianne might have tried to instill in their daughter a sense of feminine grace, but it was possible that even her influence could not have made the girl something she was not. She would still have been his daughter, not merely Adrianne's. So many of her small gestures and expressions called his own to mind. Even after seeing such things pass from generation to generation in others, it was eerie somehow, to see this small copy of himself living and breathing with a will of her own.

And so he held conference with a memory, trying to decide if there were a better course than he had chosen thus far. What would Adrianne say? Or more to the point, what would Adrianne do?

_Love the child for herself._

But he did, now. As Adrianne always had. He saw clearly, after all this time. His own desperate need for a successor in what his father had left for him to do had made him misjudge his Lady's intentions. _Hope_, she would have named their daughter—and he, seeing no hope at all in a helpless baby girl, had forbidden it. That had been the cruelest moment that had ever passed between them, and his own anger for his thwarted expectations had prevented him from regretting it until it was far, far too late. But it was not his hope that Adrianne had hoped for. It was life...that something of themselves might continue. Even under the shadow of the Warlock Lord, if it had come to that. It was a hope that saw further into the future than he had ever dared conceive of.

_What will she be, this daughter of ours? Something neither of us quite intended? Or have you always known better?_

It was not until the candle guttered out on its own, far into the night, that he forced himself to sleep.

* * *

It was a problem that had not left him the next day, as he leaned against the porch rail, watching Sissy Melaton make a determined exit out the front gate after fighting a successful, brief battle with the single remaining hinge. There went a woman who had certainly encouraged, by her own example, Andrea's headstrong nature. 

At least he felt more secure in his daughter's past safety, as well as their own present sanctuary. Too few people these days knew anything about the Druids; or too many, if one considered the number of those that were enemies. Memories rarely lasted beyond a generation in most families. But Melaton's grandfather had seen the fall of Beriarth. The hint of a memory, of a lad with the same stone-grey eyes, who had stood at his back once while the palace of a evil man, whom fate and treason had given the title of 'king,' had fallen around their ears. That boy had remembered, and taught his granddaughter to remember, too. Allanon wondered, with a bitter flavor in his mouth, what the Ohmsfords would remember in three generations.

_Drat the woman_, he thought suddenly: she did know too much. Enough to know how to manipulate him on his own terms. _An offer you can't refuse_, she'd said. Nor could he, in truth. The oaths he had sworn as a Druid, in particular his Oath of Service as an Historian, held the injunction to teach whatever of benefit he could, whenever he could, to the people of Four Lands. He could not, in good conscience, refuse the request. Provided, of course, that Melaton could convince the village elders that this was the answer to their present lack of schooling for their youngsters. But from what little he had seen so far of her influence, he doubted that any opposition to the idea would hold out for long.

_Drat the woman_. He had intended, for the time being, to have a single pupil: his daughter. But if Melaton managed to carry her notion through... Not that he considered it a waste of energy. Nor would it be the first time in his life he had served in the humble position of a village schoolmaster, though it had been a long time. It would also prevent the girl from being completely isolated from her peers, something neither he nor the midwife wanted to see happen, though each for different reasons. The Druid was relieved, at least, that Andrea's disorientation seemed to be diminishing. Familiar surroundings and ordinary tasks were the best cure he knew, the chief reason he had elected to remain in the Vale for the time being. He might have preferred the Westland as a quiet place to settle for a little while, a less difficult place to remain unobtrusive. But at present, further travel was likely to be too destabilizing for Andrea. Too much time brooding by herself would not help either.

That was another thing to consider as well. A village schoolmaster in a remote hamlet could become nearly invisible; it would be easy to forget just _who_ the man was, when to most of the Valemen his name meant things too distant from their world to take seriously. It was easy to forget that things were not as simple as they appeared to be. Yes, a village schoolmaster was far less likely to attract attention than the mysterious Druid Allanon hiding out in the old house with a daughter about whom every unusual thing would now be remembered.

And, truth be told, the employment, meager as it was, would prevent a serious drain on his purse.

_Drat the woman_, he thought all the same. But his daughter had a genuine affection for this mentor of hers. In the past week of traveling he had heard Granny this and Granny that. If nothing else, the old woman had been a good conscience for a growing girl.

"What did she say?" Andrea asked, coming outside. He had sent her upstairs earlier, not willing to have this particular conversation inhibited by anything that either of them might choose not to say in the girl's presence.

"Do you want to remain her apprentice?" he said.

Andrea hesitated. "I thought you were going to teach me everything I need to know?" She was still a little afraid—he heard the tiniest flicker of thought: he might leave her here again.

_Never, _he said to those anxious eyes._ Never._

"I will teach you all I am able to, down to the name of the last star in the sky, if we run out of other subjects," he answered. "But I won't pretend to know everything you might ever need to know in your life, or that I could teach it to you if I did." Experience was often the only teacher, and even to know that fact was one of its lessons. She did not know that yet, and it was impossible, by its very nature, to explain it. The best he could hope to do was teach her how survive the learning. "If you wish to continue with her, I have no objections."

"I...think I'd like to...sometimes."

"Our lessons _will_ take precedence," he reminded her, and she nodded.

"You think about it, then. You'll have other studies soon enough. If your Granny-woman's able to arrange matters, I will be teaching in the school here."

Andrea expression, already doubtful, clouded at this. "Then we _are_ staying here. For a long time."

"As long as seems reasonable, yes." Was there any way to relate his own perception of time to her? Even the end of the summer might seem distant to her.

She sighed, but there was no flare of temper this time. A spark came to her eye. "I can't _wait_," she said, "to see Ceslee's face when she finds out."

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**A/N:** There are a few more chapters left of this, and I'll try to remember to post them when I post AMA. Thanks for reading! Do review, please? 


	19. Chapter 19

**Obligatory Disclaimer:** This story is a work of fan-fiction and is in no way intended to infringe upon the copyright of Terry Brooks, creator of the Shannara series.

**A/N:** For those of you who are actually reading this story, I'm sorry it's taken so long for me to update. I've been very busy with r/l, and my free writing time has been spent on finishing up my Harry Potter fan-fic novel, _A Merciless Affection_. I'll try to get chapters of this story out more regularly, although I warn you that there aren't many left.

Unfortunately, this chapter sort of rambles through miscellaneous musings. But it does set up the next chapter, which I promise is much more interesting.

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**Friends**

Before the week was out, Shea and Flick had made their way to the house in the hollow. A great deal had changed there by now. All of the shutters, closed for most of the years the Valemen could remember, were open on shimmering panes of glass. The tall grass and vines had been cut back from around the building, all except the rosebush climbing wild up the south side of the house. At night, candlelight bobbed in the windows, if anyone happened to see that flash behind the trees as they went along the road. It was the new schoolmaster's house now, and still odd, but it was glanced at now with the beginnings of curiosity, instead of ignored as an ever-present anomaly.

Its inhabitants were happy with it, if no one else was. They had turned the place inside out. On a new clothesline were hung freshly washed sheets one day, rugs to be beaten another, and on that day there was coughing and a haze of dust over the sunlit clearing behind the house. A muddy morass was spreading out by the back porch, where Andrea poured the dirty water from washing every dish in the kitchen. Hammer rang on nail against loose boards. The storekeepers certainly had nothing to complain of, since the stranger's money was as good as anyone else's. And the two of them no longer depended on anyone's charity for their meals.

Andrea had made her way to Granny's sooner than she had planned, however; she lost a whole day's work huddling by Granny's hearth, sipping willow bark tea and trying to talk her way past the old woman's questions. She had been hesitant to come; there were too many things she couldn't say to Granny now, and her grimaces were not merely for pain. There was anxiety too—would her father comprehend that what had led her there this soon had nothing to do with her apprenticeship or a preference for the old woman's company. Andrea's face flashed alternately hot and cold with uncertainty over her father's understanding of the issue. There were times—fortunately rare—when the whole world seemed hopelessly divided into things only men could understand (or _thought_ only they could understand; Andrea had never been convinced) and things only women could understand (which, as far as she could tell, was true.) The midwife had surprised her by asking abruptly, in the midst of that thought, if Andrea were wishing not to have been born a girl. Of all times, this seemed the most reasonable to think ill of being female. But the question called up the years of Granny's teachings and her mother's remembered presence and something else in the core of her own soul, and suddenly Andrea would not have chosen otherwise—not to end her present misery, and (though she would have felt chagrined to admit it) not for her father's sake either.

Fortunately, the fact that she was girl did not seem to worry him now. Although she still had an occasional bad moment when she remembered that she was supposed to have been a boy, it no longer seemed to matter so much. She was herself—and Allanon's daughter—and no one could take that away, nor question any longer who or what she was or where this unknown orphan belonged.

All the same, the night before she planned to go make her apology to Jamie, she had asked, "Do I have a second name?"

"And a third, and a fourth," her father said, in the way he had of teasing her by telling her what she had asked and not what she had meant.

"_Four_ names?" she demanded, astonished.

"That's by tradition: Andrea Jean Theresa Beryl. The first is your own name. The second your namesake: Jean Ellristan, one of King Eventine's cousins, who was present at your birth. The third and fourth are your grandmothers' names."

"Why so many?" she asked; she couldn't think what to do with a second given name, let alone two more.

"Surnames became little used by the Council—eventually there were too many with the same few. And in their inner machinations they wanted to know precisely who they were dealing with, even down to their grandchildren."

"Then _do_ we have a last name?"

"Yes, I suppose so." He studied her a moment. "You ought to be able to guess it."

Andrea sighed. But in fact, she liked best his questions that took careful thinking to answer, thinking that led her to her own correct conclusions. Allanon had told her the history of the Druids in detail, from their very beginning, and somewhere in that story must be the answer. Sitting down on the sofa, she stared into the fire and thought back. That had been a bright day...the sun and the wind and the trees and the sky...a wonderful day, listening to her father's stories; neither the underlying fears she'd had that she would be abandoned again in the Vale nor the grey fog she had been walking into even then seemed to have any place in the memory of his voice unfolding new worlds to her mind.

Galaphile had called together the Druid Council over a thousand years ago, almost a thousand years after the Great Wars had nearly destroyed all life on Earth. The Druid Bremen was said to have been descended directly from that great leader, and it was so. In fact, there was an unbroken line from father to son. _Until me_, Andrea thought ruefully. But it was a distracting thought, and at the moment, not important. She returned her ponderings to the more distant past.

Galaphile had been the son of the exiled King of Beryllia and a princess of the Elves. Being half-Elven himself, and seeing the progress toward cooperation that had been made between Elves and Men, he saw, too, that the Races—not divided as they were now into their separate lands, but jumbled together, competing for space and resources—would someday be at war if nothing were done to avert it. So he had called together, to Paranor, men of learning from all the Races. The Kings of Beryllia had long carried secrets passed down from the Old World. If enough such knowledge had been passed down to others, it might be possible to piece together sufficient of the old learning to improve the lives of everyone in the Lands.

It had been a noble experiment, Allanon had told her, but ultimately it had failed. The nobles of Beryllia, sons of the men who had chosen to follow their king into exile in the Four Lands, had demanded their right to sit on the Council. Galaphile had acquiesced—a costly mistake. In time these men, used to their own petty internal struggles, had caused conflict within the whole group; within another generation, the majority of the Council members of other Races, dissatisfied with how little was being accomplished in reviving the old sciences—for Galaphile had overestimated how much useful knowledge had been passed down, and underestimated how difficult piecing the shards together might prove to be—­and weary of the Beryllians dominance of the Council, had left.

A few had remained, especially Elves, and it was truly said that the blood of all the Races flowed in the veins of the Druids. They _had_ secured a degree of peace in the Lands; hungry for leadership in the midst of the chaos of that age, all men had turned to the Druids for justice. But in time, the Council drifted further and further from its original purposes. They had been divided again by Brona and his followers, and the whole of the Lands had suffered from the end result. After the First War of the Races, and the discovery of the life extension process, the Druids became more and more introverted. They styled themselves the Lords of Paranor, and believing themselves still the ancestral keepers of the Four Lands, failed to see how their influence had waned from lack of involvement in the problems of the world. The leadership of the Council, an elected position (at Galaphile's insistence) had long since passed from the line of Galaphile. But, to Andrea, it seemed fitting that the man who had prevented the Warlock Lord's victory in the Second War of the Races was Galaphile's heir.

But the answer to her question did not lie with Galaphile. Chances were that he, in his attempts to disavow his royal blood and become merely a leader among equals, had thought up this crazy naming system. But it was Galaphile's father, the exiled king...and his followers...Aristin Golandra was one of those, the king's friend and loyal man. The name had eluded her until she remembered it in combination with that one. Aristin Golandra and Eviander Shamrock.

Andrea looked up from her musings. "Shamrock?"

Allanon smiled, looking up in turn, and she knew she had it right.

"It's yours if you want it," he said.

"Andrea Shamrock," she tried it on. "Andrea Jean Theresa Beryl Shamrock." She shuddered. "That's TOO much. Andrea Shamrock it is, then." And thus armed, she would go to meet Jamie.

* * *

She was surprised the next morning to find the Valegirl at her own gate. 

"I'm...supposed to apologize," Jamie explained.

"Did you get in trouble?" Andrea asked, though to her knowledge, Jamie hadn't gotten a beating over it.

"I didn't actually. I'm not sure why."

"I'm glad." Andrea had a glimmer of an idea why, but she didn't say it aloud.

"I didn't really deserve to," Jamie said defensively, then mellowed. "I _am_ sorry, though."

"I'm sorry, too. I was just coming to apologize to _you_." Both girls grinned at the coincidental nature of their meeting.

"Look, I really am sorry," Jamie said again, serious, trying to meet the Druid girl's eyes, to convey that she truly wanted to be friends again. But Andrea hesitated.

"What about Ceslee?"

"She's so two-faced. She gets you to tell her all your secrets, and then she turns around and makes fun of you to other people."

Andrea nodded. She wondered how Jamie hadn't figured that out after all this time. Ces was awfully good at making up to people who had sworn the week before they would never speak to her again. Andrea didn't know how she managed it, but she found the trait despicable, and felt the other girls were fools for falling for it. _Am I a fool?_ she thought, _to trust Jamie again? _But against all reason, she wanted to have a friend, and Jamie had always been more appealing company than anyone else in the village.

"Well, _I_ don't do that," she said.

"I know," Jamie answered. She was studying the end of her pale yellow braid, but now she looked up. "Can I...see your house?" she asked hopefully.

At present there were few quicker ways into Andrea's heart. "Of course! Come on." And though neither girl knew it then, this renewal of friendship would last to the end of their lives.

Jamie's open, honest awe did not hurt anything, as she was led around the house. It faded with familiarity over time, of course, but that first day, Andrea found Jamie's excitement a match for her own, as the two girls went from attic to cellar. They peered into all the upstairs bedrooms. ("You could almost have an _inn_ here," Jamie said.) Every cupboard in the kitchen was explored, including the pantry that was a whole, small room to itself. Andrea carefully opened the inside shutters—her father had taught her how to work the hidden catches—of the one small window in the tiny room behind the stairs, lined with shelves of books just waiting to be read. The prospect of their pages was not as interesting to Jamie as to herself, however; instead they ended up delving into the trunks, left unpacked for more years than they knew, that littered the sitting room across the front hall from the living room.

"It's almost lunchtime," Allanon remarked, pausing in the doorway; though, in fact, Andrea knew that they did not keep any sort of regular mealtimes—they ate when they thought of it. Still, they tried to make a point of thinking of it often enough to count for three meals a day.

She was on the verge of asking if Jamie could stay to lunch, but the other girl chimed in, "I really should go home." And Andrea knew suddenly, without any words being spoken, that Jamie would find herself in trouble over their friendship if she tried to circumvent her parents' strictness too often.

Now it seemed school could not begin soon enough, so that whole days in class together could make up for Jamie's short, infrequent visits: as Jamie had predicted, her father frowned on her spending too much time at her friend's house. Maybe Jon Brocker was only doubtful of that friendship's sincerity, although Andrea privately opined that he just plain didn't like her anymore. From the thin line her father's mouth made when she said that, and a glimmer of thought in the dark eyes, it occurred to her that the justice probably didn't like Allanon either.

Andrea had begun to despair that the tensions of that day in the inn would haunt her forever. But one evening, when she looked up in the golden light that spread as the afternoon thunderstorm—the first of the year—lifted its dark veil before the setting of the sun, she saw two familiar forms tramping through the wet grass toward the front door. "It's Shea and Flick," she announced from the window; setting down her sewing, she hurried out onto the porch.

Shea Ohmsford returned her greeting lightly, though his eyes were anxious. But Flick met her level and dubious gaze with a grumbled declaration that he was only there to keep an eye on things. Then her father was looming in the open doorway behind her.

"Hello," Allanon said. _He's not surprised_, Andrea thought, Sensing it in a silent exchange of thoughts and half-thoughts that she now took as nearly for granted as drawing breath.

"Hello," said Shea. He put his hand on the porch rail. "Can we talk?"

A faint, grim smile played at the corners of the Druid's mouth, and he answered quietly, "Of course."

**

* * *

A/N:** There really is a vast amount of backstory to my version of the history of the Druids, which I hint at in this chapter, but which will almost certainly never be written now. 


End file.
